Aaron Rodgers is less than a week away from his first game of his 21st NFL season. The oldest player in the league is expected to be the best quarterback the Pittsburgh Steelers have seen since Ben Roethlisberger. He didn’t play in the preseason, so we don’t have a glimpse of the 2025 version of him just yet. When we finally see it on Sunday, NFL Network’s Kyle Brandt is expecting to see one of two extremes.
“Rodgers, guys, I hate to say it, has not been great in Week 1 over the past half decade,” Brandt said Monday on Good Morning Football. “He doesn’t win a lot in Week 1, the last four to five years. And now he’s got to get off and running with this Steelers team that always gets it done. If it’s great, it’s fascinating, if it’s terrible it’s fascinating. I bet he’s not average. I had a lot of faith in him, I think it’s gonna be an A or an F.”
Neither of Aaron Rodgers’ performances in Week 1 were memorable with the Jets the last two years. In his first game in 2023, he tore his Achilles and missed the rest of the season. In 2024, his Jets didn’t put up a fight against the San Francisco 49ers.
The Steelers hope 2025 is a different story, and it’s a game that he acknowledges carries a lot of storylines. Rodgers is facing his old team and a coach who handled his departure in a way Rodgers certainly didn’t like. Meanwhile, the Steelers are facing their old quarterback with Justin Fields getting his first chance to start in New York.
It’s a game the Steelers should win. And if they’re going to be a contender this season it’s a game they need to win. It’s important for Rodgers to get off on the right foot, but he’ll be taking the field for the first time this year. He had no preseason action, which might have been valuable to build chemistry with DK Metcalf and Roman Wilson. His other top receiver, Calvin Austin III, is only recently coming back to the field after dealing with an injury.
Sauce Gardner will get plenty of looks against Metcalf, so another pass catcher is going to need to step up. If the Steelers can do that and run the ball well, Aaron Rodgers won’t have too much on his plate. The blueprint is there, but we’ll see if the offense has enough chemistry so far to follow it.
