The Pittsburgh Steelers didn’t expect to be competing for Aaron Rodgers with the New York Giants right now. Straight from the horse’s mouth, they preferred to re-sign one of their own, though hindsight reveals a pretty obvious asterisk. When Art Rooney II said that, he clearly meant Justin Fields, not Russell Wilson.
Unfortunately, the Steelers are not part of the Aaron Rodgers Multiverse, as Brooke Pryor called it. And the current evidence doesn’t exactly provide comfort. Reportedly, Rodgers has his offers on the table—he is simply not choosing one right now. Given his past, people are questioning the actual motive, and whether he is looking for attention.
“If we’re positioning it like this is a sweepstakes for Aaron Rodgers, the Jets said, ‘No thank you! Please, Giants, take him!’”, Gregg Rosenthal said. “These are two proud organizations in the Steelers and the Giants, and they’re just hoping for scraps”.
He added that neither of them are in a good position, which—fair. The Steelers just spent $150 million and a second-round pick on DK Metcalf and want Aaron Rodgers to justify it. The Giants are struggling to live down extending Daniel Jones and letting Saquon Barkley walk. But, hey, at least New York managed to win a playoff game, with Daniel Jones, just three years ago.
Still, Rosenthal isn’t buying the narrative being put out by Aaron Rodgers’ camp about being indifferent to the noise around him. “‘Oh, he doesn’t really care about what people are saying. He’s at the beach having fun and he doesn’t care’. This is a man who allowed a show that was all about him to be called ‘Enigma’”, he said. “He cares very much! He wants us to talk about him very much! I mean, that’s the whole point, is he wants to seem that he doesn’t care. I think he is gonna own this next month”.
If Rodgers plans to own the next month, then the Steelers have a problem on their hands. For starters, that likely would mean that they choose not to move off Rodgers as their preference. And that would mean they are going into April without a starting quarterback under contract, which is rather risky.
After all, the Steelers themselves said they hoped to have a quarterback in place well before free agency. Clearly that didn’t happen, evidently because Justin Fields wanted to test free agency. And he found a team willing to guarantee him $30 million, so good for him. The Steelers will probably have to pay Rodgers that much per year.
And the thing is, the more desperate they get, the more likely they are to bungle this contract. Of course, if Aaron Rodgers were to come here and play like Aaron Rodgers, the Steelers would be vindicated for whatever they ended up paying him. But I’m not willing to gamble 30 cents on that happening, let alone $30 million.
