The Pittsburgh Steelers happily signed up for a one-year rental in Aaron Rodgers. That’s obvious by the one-year contract he signed, but also by his comments earlier this week about 2025 likely being his last season. However, Dan Patrick wonders if Rodgers will be the only one heading out the door next offseason.
“The bigger picture, more important to me, is Mike Tomlin,” Patrick said Wednesday on The Dan Patrick Show. “Because Mike Tomlin and the Steelers signed up for one year. Now, you’re back in the quarterback wishing well again and if you’re still looking for a quarterback, man, are you behind a lot of teams. So that’s why I wonder, is Mike Tomlin one more year? If they go out, they don’t win a playoff game, then you start to look at this and say, ‘Do we need a change?’ And I wonder with Aaron Rodgers, Mike Tomlin, maybe they go out at the same time.”
In what feels like an obligatory statement every time this conversation comes up, Tomlin’s contract runs through the 2027 season. The Steelers are not a team that likes to fire a coach before their contract runs out.
With that said, as each passing season feels identical, it’s a conversation that’s only coming up more and more. And it happens at a time when both Rodgers and Tomlin are in similar positions in their career.
Since he’s a player, Rodgers is much closer to the end of his career than Tomlin is as a coach. However, neither are achieving as much as they might have been expected to early in their careers. Rodgers started his own career with a bang. But after beating the Steelers in the 2010 Super Bowl, he’s yet to get back to the big game. Tomlin won his first Super Bowl in 2008 but has yet to repeat that feat. And of course, everyone is aware of the Steelers’ recent lack of postseason success.
The big question here is whether the Steelers want Mike Tomlin to develop the quarterback they plan on drafting next offseason. Rodgers is a one-year rental for 2025. The biggest reason the Steelers chose that route is because there wasn’t another long-term option they liked at the position this offseason. Next year’s draft should be better for quarterbacks. So it makes sense that the team would go as all-in with Rodgers for this season, still trying to maximize its window to contend.
However, things just haven’t worked out recently. Some say Tomlin’s message is getting stale, and others refute that argument. Tomlin’s detractors will point to the lack of quality quarterback play as a reason that he shouldn’t develop the team’s next prospect.
Others point to the job he’s doing despite the inconsistency at that position. And to that argument, is there another coach available who would do a better job than Mike Tomlin? That’s the risk the Steelers would be taking if they decide to move on from him.
However, a playoff win seems to be the barometer of success with Rodgers this season. If Tomlin yet again fails to deliver that, the critics are only going to get louder. And in the next few years, or even next year as Patrick wonders, it could spell the end of his time in Pittsburgh.
