Aaron Rodgers announced on Wednesday that 2026 will be his last season in the NFL. The 42-year-old, four-time MVP signed a one-year deal to reunite with head coach Mike McCarthy in hopes of a last hurrah.
Rodgers called it a “full circle” moment to play for McCarthy for the first time since 2018.
That settled questions about how Rodgers viewed McCarthy after Tyler Dunne wrote a story for Bleacher Report in 2019 detailing friction between the quarterback and the coach that dated to earlier in their relationship. Rodgers indicated Wednesday that he is back in Pittsburgh only because McCarthy is the coach.
After Mike Tomlin’s departure, Rodgers said he suggested to General Manager Omar Khan that the Steelers consider McCarthy.
“I encouraged him for an outside perspective to interview Mike,” Rodgers said, via Brooke Pryor of ESPN. “Not thinking that he even would, honestly, just because the way the league goes and the trend, it’s kind of like whoever worked with Sean [McVay], Kyle [Shanahan] or one of those guys. Matt [LaFleur] now gets a lot of looks and multiple guys in those trees have.
“But then when it became more serious, I was thinking, ‘Wow, that’d be a really interesting thought to come back and play with Mike.’”
Rodgers has played for three teams over the past four seasons. He thought it was going to four in five seasons after Tomlin stepped away, admitting “there was some doubt [about a return to Pittsburgh] for sure.”
“When he said he was stepping away, that was an emotional moment just because we all love him so much and care about him, and I thought that was probably it for me in Pittsburgh,” Rodgers said. “But when the decision was made to hire Mike, I started opening my mind back up to coming back.”
Rodgers’ 22nd season will be his final season, absent a change of heart next offseason, giving him a final chance for a second Super Bowl ring. He and McCarthy won their only championship in the 2010 season.
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Steelers quarterback Aaron Rodgers says his 22nd NFL season will be his last.
Rodgers spoke with the media today for the first time since re-signing with the Steelers, and he assumed that the one-year deal he reached will be the last NFL contract he signs.
“This is it,” Rodgers said.
Rodgers will turn 43 in December and is the oldest player in the NFL. So it’s not exactly a shock that he doesn’t see himself playing beyond this season. But today’s statement was his most definitive yet that he will retire after one more year in Pittsburgh.
Rodgers spent 18 years with the Packers and two with the Jets and is now beginning his second year with the Steelers.
For whatever reason, quarterback Aaron Rodgers kept everyone in the dark as to his plans for 2026, until he signed with the Steelers over the weekend. And despite the claims that Rodgers was always returning to Pittsburgh, the team’s decision to use the unrestricted free agent tender on Rodgers proves that the Steelers truly didn’t know what he was going to do.
Here’s a possibility as to why he returned when he did. Rodgers may have been waiting for the 2026 schedule to be finalized before making it known to the league office that he’ll be playing this year.
The idea has merit in the NFL’s past practices. After Rodgers missed all but four snaps of the 2023 season due to a torn Achilles tendon, the league justified its decision to give the Jets six primetime games in the first 11 weeks of the 2024 season by saying that the Jets “kind of owe us one.”
Last year’s schedule was set before Rodgers committed to Pittsburgh. NFL V.P. of broadcast planning Mike North later said that, if the league had known Rodgers would be signing with the Steelers, the Steelers-Jets game from Week 1 would have landed in a national window.
Other tweaks to the schedule would have possibly been made, if Rodgers or the Steelers had shared with the world before the release of the 2025 schedule what they apparently knew. So it would have been very easy for the league to say, this year, that the Steelers and Rodgers “kind of owe us one” in setting the standalone games for 2026.
As it stands, the Steelers have one prime-time game before Week 10, and three thereafter. Surely, that decision wasn’t made to showcase Mason Rudolph, Will Howard, or Drew Allar. And the later games can be flexed, if 2026 doesn’t go well for the Steelers.
Would they have gotten more standalone games if the league had known Rodgers was returning? Maybe, maybe not. But there was no reason for Rodgers (who has a tendency to hold a grudge) to do the league any favors, not after what happened in 2024.
And the timeline worked out perfectly. The schedule release happened days before the start of the Steelers’ OTAs. He signed in the perfect window for both participating in the full slate of OTAs and keeping the schedule makers in the dark.
With Aaron Rodgers officially on the roster, the Steelers currently have four quarterbacks.
Veteran Mason Rudolph, second-year QB Will Howard, and rookie Drew Allar fill out the rest of the room.
Rodgers’ presence means there are now fewer reps to go around for the younger players, Howard and Allar. But offensive coordinator Brian Angelichio told reporters on Tuesday that is not an issue.
“You can never have enough quarterbacks,” Angelichio said, via Ray Fittipaldo of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. “With the system that’s in place here, it’s great that we have four quarterbacks. We have a plan on how all those guys are going to get reps.”
Angelichio is familiar with Rodgers from their shared time with the Packers, as Angelichio served as Green Bay’s tight ends coach from 2016-2018. With Rodgers potentially going into the final season of his career, Angelichio praised the QB for his willingness to help out his teammates.
“Aaron’s such a great mentor ... His feedback and the information he provides, you can’t beat that,” Angelichio said, via Brooke Pryor of ESPN. “He is very willing to help the players … I think that certainly is a big plus for us.”
With Rodgers set for at least one more ride with the Steelers in 2026, we likely won’t see the effects of his mentorship on the crop of younger QBs until a while down the road.
The news broke over the weekend that quarterback Aaron Rodgers is back with the Steelers. As of Monday, that was apparently news to linebacker Payton Wilson.
Via Brooke Pryor of ESPN, Wilson was surprised to see Rodgers at the facility.
“I was walking in, and he was coming out, and it was good to see him,” Wilson said. “I was a little shocked, definitely.”
Unlike last year, when Rodgers showed up for the mandatory minicamp at the tail end of the offseason program, he signed and reported for the first day of OTAs. Which makes sense. There’s plenty of work to be done without long-time coach Mike Tomlin there, and there’s only so much time with which to get it done.
If this will be Rodgers’s last year (and it would be wise for everyone to assume that), he’ll want to savor every minute of it. And he’ll want to have it go as well as possible.
Showing up sends a message that he gives a shit. That he wants to help the Steelers do something they haven’t done in a decade — advance past the wild-card round of the playoffs.
The work now begins in earnest. While it hardly guarantees a good outcome, it’s a good sign that Rodgers is both signed and committed.
The Steelers have signed a pair of their draft picks on Monday.
Pittsburgh announced receiver Germie Bernard and running back/receiver Eli Heidenreich put pen to paper on their respective four-year rookie contracts.
Bernard was the No. 47 overall pick in the second round out of Alabama. He caught 64 passes for 862 yards with seven touchdowns in 2025. He played two seasons for the Crimson Tide after spending 2022 at Michigan State and 2023 at Washington.
Heidenreich was the club’s final selection of 2026 at No. 230 in the seventh round. He played his college ball at Navy, appearing in 38 total games. He registered 109 catches for 1,994 yards with 16 touchdowns as well as 1,157 yards rushing with seven TDs.
Aaron Rodgers returned to the Steelers for the start of Phase III of the club’s offseason program, immediately getting on the field for Monday’s practice.
After the session, offensive lineman Troy Fautanu — who has been working at left tackle after spending the 2025 season on the right side — said that he and many of his teammates found out about the QB signing on Instagram.
But Fautanu is glad to have the veteran QB leading the huddle again.
“I was happy to see him back, obviously to have our leader back from last year, kind of having a year with him and kind of learning from him,” Fautanu said, via Brooke Pryor of ESPN. “We kind of just picked up where we left off.
”... Today had to get back used to [the cadence], because we’ve been hearing Will [Howard] and Mason [Rudolph] and them the past couple weeks. But once he got back in there after that first snap, it was kind of like we never left.”
Rodgers, 42, completed 65.7 percent of his passes for 3,322 yards with 24 touchdowns and seven interceptions last season.
The Steelers signed undrafted free agent cornerback Tamon Lynum on Monday, the team announced.
Lynum had a tryout at the team’s rookie minicamp, and he and center Greg Crippen were the only two players signed afterward.
The Steelers have 91 players on their roster, including an international exemption.
Lynum played two seasons at Pitt after transferring from Nebraska. He appeared in 23 games at Nebraska, totaling 14 tackles, a sack, a tackle for loss and two forced fumbles.
In two seasons at Pitt, Lynum played 23 games and recorded 57 tackles, two interceptions and eight pass breakups.
He was not invited to the Scouting Combine.
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.
