In the NFL, once a quarterback hits his late 30s, it becomes harder to do the same things a younger version of himself would have done. In your 40s, you might as well retire already. That was until Tom Brady broke that trend a couple of seasons ago when he won a Super Bowl with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers at the age of 43. According to ESPN’s Jeff Darlington, that may have changed the way we view older quarterbacks. He points to Aaron Rodgers specifically.
“Well, Aaron Rodgers’ proximity to Tom Brady’s career actually, I think, is hurting the expectations we place on him,” Darlington said Tuesday on Get Up. “What Tom Brady did, I think we accept it as realistic. It is not. No quarterback has ever won a Super Bowl after 40 years old, Tom Brady did it at 43. That doesn’t mean that Aaron Rodgers at 41, he’ll be 42 at the end of this season, should be expected to do that. And yet, we are going into this season boom or bust. Personally, I don’t expect Aaron Rodgers to be a Super Bowl-winning quarterback.”
Rodgers and Brady’s careers have been intertwined for a long time. They started differently, but during their primes they were each some of the best to ever play the position and were compared to each other for years in arguments regarding the GOAT QB title, although Brady’s run away with that title now.
What Brady did in Tampa Bay was unprecedented. Coming off a first-round exit in the playoffs in his last season in New England, people thought he had finally lost it. He went to Tampa Bay and just kept chugging along, on the route to multiple division championships, and a Super Bowl victory at the age of 43, making him the oldest quarterback to ever win that game.
The Steelers are hoping they can strike gold with Aaron Rodgers in similar fashion. But that might be wishful thinking, as Darlington suggests. For one, Brady didn’t have an Achilles injury hampering him. And Brady never went 5-12, like Rodgers did last season with the New York Jets.
That doesn’t mean Rodgers can’t have success. Taking his performance over the second half of the 2024 season alone, that might be enough for the Steelers if it’s something he can repeat. Their defense is strong. If Arthur Smith can get his run game going, Rodgers could have a lot of help. The Jets asked him to do it all. The Steelers will only be asking him to play quarterback.
Some have high hopes for the Steelers this year, even going as far as the Super Bowl. That may be possible, but a lot of things will need to go right for that to happen. And aside from Brady, no other quarterback over the age of 40 has won it. With that in mind, we shouldn’t have the highest expectations for Aaron Rodgers. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be excited about the possibilities either.
