For the third straight season, Aaron Rodgers will be starting the season in a game involving the Jets.
If he signs with the Steelers. And if the report that is circulating regarding the Week 1 schedule is accurate.
Matt O’Leary of the Just Jets podcast reports that the Jets will open the 2025 season by hosting the Pittsburgh Steelers. If accurate, it means Rodgers will be back in New Jersey, right out of the gates.
First, Rodgers has to sign with the Steelers. It’s widely believed that he will.
Colin Cowherd recently suggested that Rodgers is waiting to see the schedule before making a final decision. If that’s accurate, would it make him more likely or less likely to pick Pittsburgh?
Again, if the report is accurate, it’s a very juicy option for Week 1. Too juicy, it seems, to be tucked into the full slate of early games.
Even without Rodgers on the Steelers, former Steelers quarterback Justin Fields will likely be starting for the Jets.
If Rodgers joins the Steelers, he’ll also see the Packers (in Pittsburgh) and the Vikings (in Ireland) in 2025. And he’ll get a chance to return to Chicago, where he can once again remind Bears fans that he still owns them.
It all becomes official at 8:00 p.m. ET on Wednesday night. If Rodgers hopes to upstage the schedule release, he can announce his intention to join the Steelers 15 minutes or so before the full slate of 272 games is announced.
The Jets appear to be making a change at punter.
In a post to his Instagram account on Tuesday afternoon, Thomas Morstead said that he was just informed by the Jets that they are releasing him and the team made it official a short time later. Morstead was set to have a cap number of a little more than $3 million and the Jets will clear more than $2.5 million in cap space by cutting him loose.
Morstead spent the last two seasons with the Jets and also played for the team in 2021. He also had brief stints with the Falcons and Dolphins after spending the first 12 years of his career with the Saints.
Morstead has a career average of 41.5 net yards per punt.
The Jets also announced that they have signed undrafted rookie Kai Kroeger. He averaged 44.6 yards per punt at South Carolina and joins Austin McNamara as the punters on the team’s 90-man roster.
The NFL announced today which six games will be played in Europe in 2025 — including two in a row for the Vikings.
All six games will be played on Sundays at 9:30 a.m. ET, which means they will be afternoon games in Europe and early-mornings for American fans. In the U.S., all six games will air on NFL Network.
A new twist this year is that the Vikings will play in Dublin one week and then play in London a week later, which could function for the NFL as an experiment to see how travel within Europe goes. The league is exploring playing more games in Europe, and possibly even locating a team or multiple teams across the pond, and every new scheduling wrinkle is a step toward determining the logistics of that. The Vikings will be the first NFL team ever to play back-to-back-to-back games in three countries, going from the United States to Ireland to England.
The six games in Europe are:
September 28: Vikings at Steelers in Croke Park in Dublin.
October 5: Vikings at Browns at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium in London.
October 12: Broncos at Jets at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium in London.
October 19: Rams at Jaguars at Wembley Stadium in London.
November 9: Falcons at Colts at Olympic Stadium in Berlin.
November 16: Commanders at Dolphins at Santiago Bernabeu Stadium in Madrid.
The NFL has also scheduled a Chargers “home” game on Friday, September 5, at Corinthians Arena in Sao Paulo. The Chargers’ opponent has not yet been announced.
The uncertain status of quarterback Aaron Rodgers has hovered over the Steelers for nearly two months. There’s a very good chance the situation will be resolved soon, with Rodgers finally inking a deal to play in Pittsburgh.
So why the delay? As one source who knows Rodgers (but who has no specific knowledge of this situation) recently explained it, Rodgers may have chosen the lesser of two distractions.
Yes, it’s a distraction to have Rodgers linked to the Steelers without signing a contract. If, however, he had signed but stayed away from the first two phases of the offseason program Rodgers, it would have led to more questions and scrutiny.
Rodgers has always been opposed to the first two phases of the offseason program. By not agreeing to terms until the third phase looms, he avoids the offseason program until the offseason program becomes, from Rodgers’s perspective, highly relevant.
it’s a simple solution. Rodgers informally tells the Steelers he’ll be signing, eventually. He gets the playbook and other information he’ll need to prepare for OTAs, and he shows up for the six days of 2025 OTAs and (unless he’ll be going to Egypt, again) the mandatory minicamp that caps the offseason program.
However it plays out, we’re getting closer and closer to an answer as to Rodgers’s status. And all signs point to Rodgers becoming a Steeler.
Still, nothing is done until it’s done.
Wide receiver Arian Smith has signed his first NFL contract.
The Jets announced that the deal was finalized on Monday. It’s a four-year contract for the fourth-round pick.
Smith led Georgia with 817 receiving yards during the 2024 season. He had 48 catches and four touchdowns as well and he finished his college time with 68 catches for 1,356 yars and 10 touchdowns.
Garrett Wilson, Allen Lazard, Xavier Gipson, Josh Reynolds, Tyler Johnson, and Malachi Corley are also on the wide receiver depth chart.
Smith is the sixth Jets draft pick to sign with the team. Second-round tight end Mason Taylor is the only unsigned player in the draft class.
