Quarterback Aaron Rodgers officially re-signed with the Steelers on Monday, just as the team began its OTAs.
When it comes to Rodgers’ pass-catchers, Pittsburgh traded for Michael Pittman earlier this offseason. The two started to get acquainted weeks ago, when Pittman got in some throws with the QB. But he found out Rodgers was officially coming back much like the rest of us.
“I found out from Twitter,” Pittman said Monday, via Mark Kaboly of the Pat McAfee Show.
Pittman is still getting familiar with Rodgers’ style as a QB, but the receiver knows Rodgers isn’t afraid to let a teammate know when he doesn’t like something.
“It didn’t happen to me specifically yet, but I’ve seen it from watching games and stuff,” Pittman said with a laugh, via Chris Adamski of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. “He’s just a vet — a super vet quarterback. So he knows what he likes and doesn’t like. You guys have watched him [play, how if you’re not doing what you’re supposed to do, he’s going to let you know — which is good. I just think it’s good to have that leadership.”
Even with Rodgers’ experience, Pittman knows he and the QB have some work to do to get on the same page.
“This is the first day,” Pittman said, via Brian Batko of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, “so we have from now up until that first game, and we’re gonna get as many reps as possible.”
With quarterback Aaron Rodgers returning to Pittsburgh, the Steelers now have four quarterbacks on the offseason roster. Eventually, they’ll be required to cut the roster to 53. Which could mean they’ll be moving on from one of the three quarterbacks not named Aaron Rodgers.
Or will they?
Chris Simms and I talked it through during Monday’s PFT Live. And we came to the conclusion that they’ll possibly keep all of them — Rodgers, Mason Rudolph, Will Howard, and Drew Allar.
It rarely ever happens. Three, for most teams, is the maximum. (Plenty only keep two.) Still, this could be one of those unique situations in which a team keeps four quarterbacks after the cuts are made.
As to Rudolph, the Steelers need a veteran who can play in a pinch. A guy who is game ready. A guy who can step in if Rodgers is injured during a game. And Rudolph has 34 regular-season appearances and 19 starts, with a 9-9-1 record.
As to Allar, they just used a third-round pick to draft him. Even if they need to re-teach him the position from the ground up (and they apparently do), cutting Allar would be an admission that they wasted a prime pick, the 76th overall selection.
As to Howard, the Steelers spent plenty of time in the offseason talking him up. McCarthy supposedly loves him. Cutting him would expose their comments as the smokescreen many believed they were.
Yes, Allar or Howard — if cut — could be signed to the practice squad. But first they’d have to get through waivers. Any other team could make a claim. And if they aren’t claimed by another team, wouldn’t that be a loud and clear indictment that neither guy should have been drafted?
The safe way to save face would be to trade Allar or Howard. Or to cut Rudolph (who wouldn’t be subject to waivers) and sign him to the practice squad. They could then elevate Rudolph for game days and make him the backup quarterback. But Rudolph would have to be willing to not sign to another team’s active roster, for that strategy to work.
In the end, the only practical solution could be to keep all four of them on the 53-man roster. Which would make them shorthanded at some other position, by one player.
With Rodgers back, it’s a good problem to have. Still, the only good problem is no problem. With four quarterbacks, the Steelers eventually will have a problem to solve as to how the rest of the depth chart fits into the 53-man limit.
The news that Aaron Rodgers is officially back with the Steelers for his 22nd NFL season means he’ll continue to add to one of the most impressive statistical résumés any quarterback has ever assembled.
Of particular note is that Rodgers is likely to move ahead of Peyton Manning for the third-most touchdown passes in NFL history. Rodgers has thrown 527 touchdown passes in his NFL career, while Manning retired with 539, so Rodgers needs just 13 touchdown passes to move ahead of Manning. As long as Rodgers stays healthy, he should eclipse Manning’s career total early in the season.
Rodgers would likely need to play two more seasons to move into second place, which is currently occupied by Drew Brees, with 571 career touchdown passes. And Tom Brady’s all-time record of 649 career touchdown passes appears insurmountable.
Rodgers could also lose, a couple of of the career records he currently holds, however. At the moment, Rodgers is tied for the highest career passer rating in NFL history: Rodgers and Ravens quarterback Lamar Jackson both have a passer rating of 102.2. But last year Jackson’s passer rating was 103.8 and Rodgers’ was 94.8, so if they both play at the same level in 2026, Jackson will take first place in the record books all to himself.
Rodgers could also fall behind Joe Burrow (101.1) and Patrick Mahomes (100.8), who are currently third and fourth in NFL history in career passer rating. The best career passer rating is a record Rodgers likely won’t hold by the end of the season.
Another career record Rodgers could lose is the all-time lowest interception percentage. Rodgers has thrown 123 interceptions in 8,743 career passes, a career interception rate of 1.41 percent. Rodgers is just barely ahead of Cardinals quarterback Jacoby Brissett, who has a career interception rate of 1.42 percent, and not far ahead of Justin Herbert at 1.7 percent and Burrow and Mahomes at 1.8 percent.
Ultimately, the numbers Rodgers puts up this season, when he’ll turn 43 years old, won’t matter a lot to his legacy. He’s an all-time great regardless of what he does this season. But his career numbers will change, and perhaps not entirely for the better.
It’s official.
Aaron Rodgers is back.
The Steelers have announced that Rodgers has re-signed with the team, on another one-year deal. The move reunites Rodgers with coach Mike McCarthy. Sixteen years ago, their partnership with the Packers resulted in a Super Bowl win over the Steelers.
The item confirming the contract contains no quotes from Rodgers, McCarthy, G.M. Omar Khan, or owner Art Rooney II. The only person quoted in the article is Steelers quarterbacks coach Tom Arth, who was a Packers quarterback in 2006 with Rodgers, when Brett Favre was the starter.
“He’s extremely focused and locked in,” Arth said. “He’s such a competitive player, but he has so much fun playing the game. And that’s what I really enjoy about Aaron.
“He loves playing this game. He plays the game like he’s still 10 years old running around in the backyard. At the same time, he’s got this ferocious competitive spirit that obviously helped push him to the heights that he’s reached.
“His football IQ is off the charts. What he’s able to process and see on a play-by-play basis, between plays, it really is uncanny. There are not many players who have been able to do the things that he’s done.”
For the Steelers, there weren’t many viable options at the most important position in the sport. For Rodgers, there were no other options to be a starting quarterback.
With quarterback Aaron Rodgers recommitting to the Steelers for a second season, a new narrative has emerged in some circles of the media.
“As it turns out, there was never any question at all.”
“Which was the plan all along.”
“That was the plan.”
“That was the plan all along.”
Each of those lines come from one-sentence paragraphs in the Sunday item from Gerry Dulac of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Dulac has covered the Steelers for decades. He’s plugged in. He knows the team. And if it was the plan all along that Rodgers would be back, Dulac’s source(s) were lying to his face.
Two weeks ago, Dulac wrote that the team’s “patience could be starting to wear thin” with Rodgers, after he didn’t give them an answer before the draft. If “there was never any question” about Rodgers returning, there would have been no reason for the team’s patience to ever be tested.
Then there’s the fact that, three weeks ago, the Steelers applied the unrestricted free agent tender to Rodgers. If “there was never any question” about Rodgers returning, there was never any reason for the Steelers to make a CBA chess move aimed at securing a potential compensatory draft pick for Rodgers if he signed with another team. If “there was never any question” about the outcome, the Steelers never had to be concerned about Rodgers signing with another team.
Of course there was a question about whether Rodgers would re-sign. The Steelers thought he’d come back, but they didn’t know he was coming back until he did. They didn’t even know he was making a sudden and unexpected trip to Pittsburgh 11 days ago. They brushed it off, as one source told us, as “Aaron being Aaron” — and they remained both willing to roll out the Terrible Towel and fully unaware as to what he was going to do.
The fact that he chose to sign a one-year deal with the Steelers over the weekend hardly means that it was a fait accompli from the moment the 2025 season ended.
If anything, the immediate signs were pointing to Rodgers walking away. In the regular-season finale between the Ravens and Steelers, NBC’s Mike Tirico and Cris Collinsworth seemed to be dropping fairly strong hints that Rodgers was leaning toward calling it quits — something they surely gleaned from whatever Rodgers had said during the production meeting before the game.
Ultimately, Rodgers chose to return to the Steelers, even with the guy who attracted him there in the first place (coach Mike Tomlin) gone. Maybe the explanation is as simple as this: Rodgers didn’t want his last throw in the NFL to have been a pick-six in a playoff game.
Whatever his reason(s) for running it back in Pittsburgh, the fact that Rodgers decided to come back hardly means it was always inevitable. In the end, however, the Steelers (who have no other immediately viable starter) needed Rodgers and Rodgers (who had no other takers in free agency) needed the Steelers.
Once Rodgers decided he wanted to keep playing, the passage of time — and the lack of options elsewhere — left him with only one place to play.
