Steelers OC Arthur Smith has spent months retooling his offense with Aaron Rodgers in mind, according to reports — and himself. Speaking to Missi Matthews for the team’s website recently, he basically said as much. Although Rodgers didn’t sign until June, he met with Smith and the team back in March.
Change is nothing new for Smith, who has run an offense now in three different cities and many different quarterbacks.
“You learn to adapt to the change. You’d love to have that consistency, but that’s not the reality sometimes,” Smith told Matthews.
He noted last year with the team’s new quarterbacks and the research that goes into learning them. “The same thing we did with Aaron [Rodgers],” Smith confirmed.
“Obviously, there’s an unknown if he wasn’t gonna be here,” Smith added, also signaling that there was a real possibility that Rodgers might not sign. “But the way you built things, and the way I kind of mapped it out, and that’s what I showed him when he got here a couple days ago, we’ve constructed to move forward with him. The way we wanted to evolve, anyway, really fit his skill set. So we’re excited. I’m really excited to get going on the season.”
Of course, now that Rodgers is here, that justifies the work, and the focus shifts to implementation. According to reports, Smith and Rodgers “immediately dove” into the playbook as soon as he signed his contract, and Smith seems to confirm that in his previous answer.
Given that he took so much time to sign and only showed up for a three-day minicamp, he should have. Arthur Smith could have only given Aaron Rodgers a crash course in his offense, which he’ll be studying before they start camp in Latrobe.
The most interesting comment, though, was Smith saying that Rodgers already fit the changes he wanted to make. Earlier this offseason, he admitted that he couldn’t do everything he would have liked to do. With Rodgers, he feels, he can more fully implement his offense than with Russell Wilson and Justin Fields.
But if you’re worried about a battle for control over the offense, neither Arthur Smith nor Aaron Rodgers is.
“I’m gonna learn the offense, and Arthur and I are gonna talk a bunch this summer,” Rodgers said.
For his part, Smith called the idea of Rodgers taking control of the scheme a “fantastical narrative.”
It’s clear, especially in hindsight, that the Steelers felt all along the scene would unfold in this way. Rodgers and the team communicated throughout the process, even if he might not have had Arthur Smith’s playbook in his hand.
However, Rodgers and Smith had discussed the matter extensively during their previous meeting, and based on that, Smith assembled his vision for the 2025 season. Even knowing that there was a possibility that he might not sign. But when you’re talking about a would-be starter, it only makes sense to plan ahead.
