A year ago, Hall of Fame head coach Tony Dungy was touting the Pittsburgh Steelers as Super Bowl contenders. Heading into 2025, Dungy doesn’t sound nearly as confident. Reacting to Aaron Rodgers officially signing as the team’s starting quarterback, Dungy has his reservations.
“To me, it’s a big gamble and it may pay off huge,” Dungy said on the NFL on NBC YouTube channel. “We’ll see what happens.”
Dungy isn’t completely panning the move. But he, like many others, understand the risk. A quarterback who will be 42 years old by the time the Steelers’ regular season ends, one who is two years removed from an Achilles tear and one year away from a five-win season for a New York Jets team that was completely gutted, including by releasing Rodgers.
Pittsburgh is on its latest attempt to find a veteran quarterback who can get the team past the Wild Card round. Mitch Trubisky wasn’t the answer in 2022. Nor was Russell Wilson in 2024. Rodgers has a small window to win, signed to a one-year deal with retirement ahead of him, and will attempt to give Pittsburgh its first postseason victory since 2016.
While Rodgers has largely been durable throughout his career, Dungy isn’t sold on that continuing.
“Can he stay healthy at that age?” he said. “He didn’t stay healthy for the Jets.”
Rodgers tore his Achilles four plays into his debut 2023 season with the team. Aggressively rehabbing, he nearly returned late in the season but opted to remain sidelined with the Jets’ season effectively over. He played all 17 games in 2024 but was clearly hobbled by a knee injury in the first half of the season, hindering his and the offense’s play. Other reporting indicates he spent as much time in the trainer’s room as he did the meeting rooms.
As the man who mentored Mike Tomlin in the NFL, Dungy knows how the Steelers think. Pivoting to Rodgers, however, seems counter to how the franchise normally conducts business and the hope of feeling the Tom Brady effect, as other analysts have speculated, doesn’t seem as likely.
“I was in Tampa and so much of the Brady effect wasn’t during training camp. It wasn’t during the season. It was in February, March, April, when he’s out there in the summer working out with these guys,” Dungy said. “Getting them ready there all the time. Lifting that locker room up. And Aaron Rodgers hasn’t done that. He’s gonna show up here now for their mandatory stuff, but so much of what Tom did was in the offseason.”
Rodgers spent the last three months contemplating his future while dealing with self-described personal issues involving friends and family. He skipped the team’s six voluntary OTA practices and missed the initial offseason workouts in the weight room and on the practice field. Pittsburgh’s mandatory minicamp only runs through Thursday before the team breaks for the summer, not coming together again until training camp. Perhaps Rodgers will organize workouts with teammates in between but compared to every other starting quarterback around the league, Rodgers was the least active this offseason for his team.
While Dungy sees the feast-or-famine nature of Rodgers, there’s the chance for a third outcome. More of the same. Another 10-win campaign that has its moments but ends like the others. A playoff loss and Pittsburgh asking what’s next.
