The one reason why the Steelers signing Aaron Rodgers makes sense

Signing a 41-year-old quarterback to a one-year deal is the sign of a directionless franchise. But there *is* an upside to Rodgers moving to Pittsburgh

Yes, this could all be a farce. It probably will be a farce. The Steelers signing a 41-year-old Aaron Rodgers two years removed from an Achilles injury after *deep breath* trading for DK Metcalf, signing the receiver to a bumper extension, trading away George Pickens, benching Justin Fields for Russell Wilson, then telling Fields they he is Their Guy, then telling Wilson to take the first plane out of town, then losing Fields in free agency, is such a scattershot approach that all you can do is rub your eyes.

It is weird to reach this point. Somehow, the Steelers have become the most directionless franchise in the league. For a culture built on championships, it is, well, perplexing.

A fourth consecutive wildcard game blowout should have triggered a wake-up call in Pittsburgh. Mike Tomlin has proven to be one of the finest floor-raising coaches in the league. But his reputation still rests on a Super Bowl win in 2008; he’s no longer a ceiling raiser. Dan Quinn has won a playoff game with two different teams since Tomlin’s last playoff win – and Quinn was a defensive coordinator from 2021-2023. Tomlin is now 8-11 in the playoffs and 0-5 in the last eight years. And in those Wildcard losses, the Steelers haven’t even been competitive; in their last four Wildcard defeats, the Steelers have trailed by a combined score of 90-24 at half-time. Woof.

For a franchise synonymous with championships, that’s not good enough. Tomlin approaches things methodically, but this offseason was the time for a hard reset. Whether that was changing both of his coordinators, trying to swing a trade for a veteran (Geno Smith? Calling about Kyler Murray?), or shutting his eyes and buying into the Sam Darnold of it all, Tomlin and the Steelers needed a jolt of something new to end their playoff purgatory.

I am an admirer of Steelers’ DC Teryl Austin. Together, Tomlin and Austin have built outstanding gameplans, including one of the signature plans of 2024. But the defensive side of the ball has become stale in Pittsburgh, outdated compared to contemporaries across the league – more so in the deployment of the scheme rather than tracking with broader trends about when they call specific things. In the playoffs, the defense hasn’t been imaginative enough. But if the Steelers' defense is a couple of years behind league-wide trends, the offense has been stuck in the Jurassic era for half a decade. Matt Canada, one of Planet Earth’s great frauds, was hired to bring a space-age offense to Pittsburgh, but it ultimately wilted once the charlatan was exposed. Arthur Smith hasn’t fared much better, refusing to adapt or evolve the principles he hit on in Tennessee and then ran into a brick wall in Atlanta. An identity of running the ball, refusing to turn the ball over, and trying to create chunk yards with shot plays is what Tomlin demands. And that’s all well and good, but within that hallowed identity, there should still be an infusion of new ideas that help hit that overriding goal. With Arthur Smith still at the helm of the offense, the Steelers are liable to remain stuck in a wide-zone-then-boot world that has been going the way of the dodo for four years.

Then there is the roster. Entering next year, the Steelers' roster is filled with question marks. They have an aging defense, the backbone of their recent success. How long can they bank on 36-year-old defensive lineman Cam Heyward being one of the league’s best interior players? Was TJ Watt’s mild decline at the back end of last season a one-off or a sign that he is on the downside of his career? Will the young offensive line coalesce? The Steelers have invested a ton of resources upfront, and they’ve hit on a pair of gems. But there are still question marks at both tackle spots, and a shocking lack of proven players in pass pro with a soon-to-be 42-year-old walking through the door to run the offense. And what about the receiving corps? Acquiring DK Metcalf is fine, but does it make sense to doll out picks and cash for a 28-year-old with the rest of the room they have, given the offense they’re likely to run?

That leaves the Steelers in a rut. Under Tomlin, they will never bottom out. The coach is too good. But what is the path to contention in the short or medium term? The plan seems to be to run it back with the veteran quarterback playbook and an outdated offense, relying on an aging defense to squeeze out another playoff berth. Tomlin will continue to surpass expectations and guide rickety rosters to the playoffs. It’s what he does. But at some point, it becomes taxing on a fan base to know that you have no shot to compete when it matters most. Hopelessness is a sliding scale. The situation in Pittsburgh is not as dispiriting as in Cleveland, but being stuck in football purgatory brings a despondency of its own.

For too long now, the defense for Pittsburgh’s mediocrity has been that Tomlin would be in demand elsewhere. You can set your calendar by the reports that other franchises would fire their sitting coach to trade for Tomlin, before Tomlin inevitably receives a pay rise from the Steelers. And it’s true: if the Steelers fired Tomlin tonight, some organizations would walk to Pittsburgh for a chance to speak with the coach. But that argument has run out of steam. At some point, the coach who is in demand elsewhere has to deliver for the team he actually works for. Next season should be a prove-it year. The continuous kick-the-can-to-nowhere strategy isn’t working. If the Steelers fall flat again, more dramatic changes should come.

And how does Tomlin plan to burst through the Wildcard ceiling? By handing the reins to a 41-year-old curmudgeon to guide a youngish offense with a talented but unproven offensive line. Good luck!

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You will have no doubt heard all the pro-Rodgers-to-Pittsburgh arguments. Who else was on the market? Should they have drafted a quarterback they didn’t believe in? The Kenny Pickett Experience burned Tomlin. He couldn’t trust himself to bet on a non-needle-moving prospect again. Shedeur Sanders burned his way through the Steelers interview. Jackson Dart wasn’t worthy of a first-round pick. They didn’t have the ammunition to move up in the draft. Rodgers has joined on a one-year, cheap deal anyway. What, really, is the downside? Sure, the Steelers can head into the draft next offseason looking for a young quarterback, or bank on the development of sixth-round pick Will Howard. Don’t worry about the timeline incongruence, that by the time a young quarterback is ready to compete deep in the postseason (let’s generously call that two years, in the most optimistic outlook), Metcalf will be nearly 30, Heyward will be 38, and Watt will be 32. Fear not, it will all figure itself out. And I will say this: building from the middle is a viable path in the NFL. You can tip the odds by racing to the bottom to secure higher draft picks, but we now have decades of evidence that those who hunt higher picks a year out turn out to be just bad year after year.

But building from the middle at least requires a vision. What is the Steelers' vision? When Tomlin puts his head on his pillow at night, how does he envision the Steelers lifting the trophy? What does the team look like? It’s clear how Dan Campbell, Kyle Shanahan, and Jim Harbaugh envision the look, smell, and feel of a team that would one day ride the buses on a championship parade. It’s increasingly unclear with Tomlin. What is the offensive throughline from Kenny Pickett to Justin Fields to Russell Wilson to Aaron Rodgers, or even Randy Fitchner, Matt Canada, and Arthur Smith, beyond hoping to limit turnovers and letting the defensive side of the ball go hunt?

Tomlin commands respect because he is, ultimately, a great coach. Yet his approach to rebuilding the organization – his staff, his place in the building, his roster – continues to be a muddled mess.

Betting on an ageing Rodgers to bridge one era to the next has disaster written all over it. And that, in reality, is how I feel. But you can make a case that this will all work out, not just for next season but in what it will mean for Tomlin and the Steelers in the seasons to follow.

If you can move past the potential for Rodgers-inspired locker room chaos (which, tepidly, does seem slightly different in Pittsburgh with a head coach and leader Rodgers truly respects), then you can start to make some sense out of the Rodgers deal. Sure, Rodgers has already said that this will likely be a one-year farewell tour. But there is one reason above all that Rodgers gives the Steelers some medium-term hope: a chance to reorient their offense and drag Tomlin’s offensive demands into 2025.

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First, the on-field stuff. For much of last season, Rodgers looked cooked. The RPMs on his fastball dropped in the intermediate and deep portions of the field – though, man, can he still sling those quick in-breakers. He looked uncomfortable in the pocket, no longer able to spring away from danger and spin magic out of rhythm. He looked afraid to get hit, refusing to stand in and take a shot in order to buy an extra half-beat to squeeze in tight completions. He toggled between lackadaisical and rust-ridden. His accuracy, to every key area of the field, waned. His decision-making on quick-strike throws was often haywire. In short, he looked nothing like AARON BLEEPING RODGERS, despite what some of the traditional counting stats suggest.

Those figures – the yards, the touchdowns, the interceptions – are regurgitated to let us know Rodgers still has it, so long as his protection holds up and he can strike up chemistry with receivers. But there is a five-alarm fire going on under the surface. Some of the subtler stats are downright gnarly. Rodgers put together the second-highest pressure-to-sack rate of his career despite getting rid of the ball at his second-quickest clip. He tied for the lowest ADOT of his career. More troubling, his accuracy eroded at the intermediate level, an area where he once crushed everyone in the league; he finished last season with just a 50.5% adjusted completion percentage on throws between 10-20 yards, throwing more interceptions than touchdowns.

In New York, quick game and behind-the-line-of-scrimmage attempts absorbed 65.5% of the Jets’ offense. That’s not too dissimilar to Rodgers’ final MVP season with the Packers. But there was a key distinction between the two seasons: Rodgers roasted defenses at the intermediate level during his glory years in Green Bay. There was a payoff to all the underneath work. He punished defenses for keying down by slicing apart the middle of the field, and then toasting fools deep outside the numbers. Rodgers finished the 2021 season with a 65% adjusted completion percentage at the intermediate level, a 15% increase over last season; in 2021, Rodgers finished with a FORTY FIVE PERCENT adjusted completion rate on throws beyond 20-yards outside the numbers, 14% higher than he did last season.

That full-field attack was impossible to defend. The Packers blended Matt LaFleur’s rushing plan and short and intermediate passing game with the multi-progression deep passing work that Mike McCarthy had originally installed to help maximize the quarterback’s gifts as a creator. Rodgers was mesmerizing. LaFleur was a warlock. The Packers’ offense was a machine – a beautiful, sophisticated, effortless-looking machine. It remains, to me at least, the best iteration of a modern NFL offense, piloted by a genius quarterback at the apex of his powers, and the most unstoppable press-beating receiver in the NFL: Davante Adams. If a football genie could grant me three wishes, one would be to see that offense in full flight for just one more season.

Handed the numbers alone, you could close your eyes and picture it in crystal clear 4K: The deep game stuff forced defenses to play with two deep, split safeties; that created a void in front of the safeties in the middle-of-the-field, and Rodgers punished that vacated space at a league-leading clip. Tack on the run-game and Rodgers’ work in the RPO and quick-game worlds, and it was a blur of efficiency and explosivity.

That’s gone now. Without the timing, zip, accuracy, and willingness to stand in and rip it to the second level, a defense can sit in static, mundane coverages against Rodgers: keeping two safeties deep to protect the deep outside corners while squeezing down underneath to attack those quick-strike efforts.

By changing his target habits, throws had a higher degree of difficulty, and Rodgers flat-out missed too many open receivers.

Rodgers’s rhythm was a hair off. Throws that were once delivered with a punch, in a blink, dried up. Now, Rodgers is hesitant, out of step with his receivers and unable to drive the ball in quite the same way.

The outside-the-numbers, down-the-field stuff lagged, too. The numbers are concerning, at least by Rodgers’ traditional standards. The tape is even more worrying. The ball didn’t pop out of his hand in the same way last season. Everyone knows Rodgers was among the most potent downfield bombers in the NFL, but the how was even more extraordinary. He could deliver the ball accurately, with sizzle, from any platform or arm angle. But what pushed him to a different stratosphere as a downfield bomber was the trajectory of his deliveries. There were some long, looping, touch throws. But Rodgers made his hay out of driving bullets down the field. He was one of the creators of the modern way of using a hip flick to generate torque on the ball, allowing him to generate power no matter where his feet were aligned – and he would deliver his passes with a flat arc. On back shoulder throws, a big chunk of Rodgers’ downfield game, he delivered the ball differently. He didn’t offer arcing passes, hung to the back shoulder for a receiver to find. He drilled them outside the ear hole of a corner, hitting receivers directly in the facemask as they turned around to locate the ball. He didn’t give defenders a chance to turn and find the ball in flight. It was on them so quickly, with such pinpoint accuracy, that by the time they figured out where the ball was, it was a wrap.

That changed last year.

The old Rodgers turned up every now and then, but there was more arc to his delivery. He couldn’t snap his hips or generate torque the same way. The ball fluttered. Sometimes he had to gather his feet, to ramp up in order to get enough force on the ball to get it where it needed to go. Where once he delivered the ball with a sharp arc, the ball started to hang – more hang time, more loft, more chances to be attacked or picked off by defenders.

You can point to the general nonsense in New York or Rodgers's lack of chemistry with the Jets receiving corps, but those are excuses in search of a reason. Rodgers had a handful of his guys, and he missed them too often. The on-time wink-wink connection with Davante Adams devolved into a sad facsimile of its former self. The faces were the same, but the bond was different. It was like watching the Star Wars prequels. It looked like Star Wars, it sounded like Star Wars, but everything else was just off.

Perhaps that will be different this season – maybe it will be Andor (I hear that’s good?). Maybe Rodgers knew, early, that last season was a sunk cause, and refused to put himself in harm's way to preserve his body for another season. Or maybe he is just following the typical aging curve. Even Tom Brady in his last season, the demi-God of pocket movement and one fearless SOB, looked clunky in the pocket, falling off throws to hit the deck early or avoid snarling pass-rushers.

Rodgers was at pains to let everyone know that he was injured for spells last season. How, exactly, will his chances for injury decrease as he heads towards 42? Don’t ask.

Expecting Rodgers to be the same player again is unrealistic, or based upon something other than available precedent. Sometimes precedent is wrong, but if the choice is between age and precedent on one side, and Rodgers’s work ethic or unusual rehab plans on the other, I’m sticking my cash on age and precedent.

Beyond the subtle decline in his arm – still a plus-arm, but not the Rodgers of old – there was a shift in his mobility within the pocket. He meandered. It was like watching an entirely different player.

The fundamental skill of playing from the pocket in the NFL is the hallowed stick-slide-climb thrower. For rhythm-based players like Tom Brady or Jared Goff, who throw from a more traditional base, it comes as a singular fluid movement: they hit the back of their drop, stick it, slide to one side or another to avoid pressure or to throw off the pass-rushing radar of an oncoming rusher, climb through the pocket, and then deliver the throw. Rodgers at his best was different; he was built more in the vein of Lamar Jackson. He was twitchy. He would apparate from place to place. His ability to generate revs on the ball with the flip of a hip allowed him to – literally – spring from one spot to another and deliver the ball in one go (or deliver an accurate ball while on the retreat).

But that was different in New York. He wasn’t sudden in the pocket. He tried – man, he tried – but he couldn’t leap the same distances to find space in the pocket. It was as though he was moving at 0.75x speed while the encroaching pass-rushers were playing in fast-forward.

There were flashes of those sharp movements, a nod to the player gone by.

But more often, you would see Rodgers trying to squeeze in four or five pitter-patter steps to try to hit a location in the pocket to be able to get rid of the ball. And when Rodgers would plant and climb through the pocket, it came as a rumble, a wheeze, rather than the sudden jolts that have defined his career. Rodgers looked stiff; he looked old.

Pffff. That genuinely makes me sad. Rodgers used to explode through those spaces. Up, right, then out of the pocket. Bam. Bam. Bam. Now, he’s stuttering his feet, moving through the pocket like a Roomba.

Again, Rodgers was keen to make clear he was dealing with injuries last season, an often-cited point from the pro-Rodgers brigade. Can he return to, what, 75 or 80% of his former self in Pittsburgh? It seems more likely that injuries will just be a part of life for a 41-year-old quarterback playing in the hellscape of an NFL pocket without his old ability to spring from place to place.

There remains a possibility that we are treated to a Rodgers closer to his Green Bay days. Maybe another year removed from his Achilles tear, Rodgers can rediscover some of the pop in his feet to become enough of an off-script creator – all the literature tells is it takes two years for an Achillies injury to fully heal; ignore, if you’re reading that literature, that the second year after an Achillies injury is when there is a far greater risk of other injuries as a knock-on effect of the Achillies tear.

Yet that still feels like a distant case. In reality, Rodgers would be better reimagining his game, accepting that he cannot do the things he could in his last 30s, rebuilding his lower body mechanics, and taking on a late-era Payton Manning role. Forget any ideas of being a creator, and just become a distributor of the ball. It would also mean accepting taking big hits in order to deliver the ball. Rodgers hasn’t always been the fiercest in the pocket because he didn’t need to be. When you’re a threat to uncork a 50-yard shot no matter where you are on the field, standing in to take a head-on collision to gain eight or 12 yards isn’t the best trade-off. Rodgers knew his value was staying on the field and serving as the alpha and omega of the Packers’ offense. But in more of a point guard role, where the quarterback cannot create explosives himself by dancing around, it is incumbent on the quarterback to stick to the rhythm of the system – ruthlessly. Some of the toughest quarterbacks in the league are those who know they cannot create. They don’t get a chance to break contain and create. They have to stick to the script and get the ball out on-time and in-rthyhm. Jared Goff absorbs punishing strikes, all so that he can stand in an extra beat to pick up a 12-yard completion. He doesn’t have the luxury of gifting a play away.

Rodgers has always been one of the most efficient quick-game and rhythm throwers in the league. Heck, he’s maybe the most accurate, efficient, quick-game player in league history. But he burned through too many key third-downs last season by holding onto the ball too long, believing he was the player of old, and then dumping the ball before the pass-rush came crashing into his chest.

Can Rodgers adapt his game? Can he become a relentless, efficient, from-the-pocket, ballet player in the mould of Brady, Brees and Manning? I think he can. The old ways of Rodgers being a pseudo-rhythm player who really wants to buy his time before he can embrace the off-script, game-breaking stuff should be a thing of the past. In Green Bay, Rodgers channeled that side of his game more than he ever has before. In Pittsburgh, it will need to be an every-down necessity. It’s going to be an adapt-or-get-hit situation. Under that pressure, with the final rung of his legacy on the line, acquiescing to that change should be easy.

But the evidence was there in 2024. He could still sling quick RPO deliveries.

There were next-level bucket drops, often working with a condensed split and tossing the ball up to grass for a receiver to attack — just the kind of formation and touch throw Manning mastered to continue to thrive as his body betrayed him in Denver.

And when he could stand in and set himself, Rodgers could still put some sauce on quick-breaking in-strikes.

Turning himself into a relentless play-and-spray quarterback from the pocket would mean Rodgers swallowing his ego. And it would also involve putting in reps to reorient some of his lower body mechanics, something that may not be possible in one offseason program. Betting on Rodgers to accept that he is Payton Manning during his Broncos run may require a personality transplant, but it’s his best shot to help the Steelers on the field.

Rodgers says the move is “good for his soul.” Aside from the quarterback’s crystal collection, it could also be good for the Steelers – if he is willing to welcome a new interpretation of his role. Accepting that fact – early – is the best-case scenario for the deal. And given the respect between Rodgers and Tomlin, there is a better chance than elsewhere that the coach can draw what is needed out of the player.

Still: the main positive to Rodgers joining forces with Tomlin will be helping the coach redesign Pittsburgh’s offense. The Steelers’ offense needs a full teardown. And signing Rodgers doesn’t just mean signing a point-and-shoot quarterback. It is, in effect, signing a shadow offensive coordinator. Part of Rodgers’ legacy in Green Bay and New York was how much of the offensive operation he took under his own control. Whether it was the coaches hired, personnel acquired, the gameplan, or the plays run, everything was built to Rodgers’ specifications. That was ever-so slightly different in his first season with LaFleur, but, eventually, Rodgers regained control of the huddle and the offense, even if some of the offensive ideas bumped against his preferences.

What does that look like? Yes, more static sets. Rodgers has been open about the fact that he isn’t a huge fan of motioning and shifting – at least not motioning at the snap, a bedrock of LaFleur’s system. He wants as much time as possible to diagnose the defense so that he can attack it. There are Manning-style inflections: draining the play clock to a shallow point so that he can best assess the defensive landscape; shifting to change the leverage of receivers rather than wholesale changing the formation or just toggling the strength; motioning early in the snap to acquire intel from the defense rather than motioning into a play to a steal an advantage.

That stuff may feel slightly outdated, but it’s still a viable way to put your best player in an environment where he’s most comfortable to do what he does best: fry opponents. It may not garner social media buzz like the wackadoo stuff Mike McDaniel is trying in Miami, but the point is to score points. And if it puts Rodgers in his comfort zone, it’s worth doing.

Any incremental change to the Arthur Smith Offense™ is good news. And if Rodgers is working as the shadow OC, it will be more than an incremental change. Don’t laugh, but there were elements of the Jets' disastrous offense in 2024 that were ahead of the curve compared to the Steelers.