After bonding with teammates earlier this month, Aaron Rodgers has bonded with his family.
The Steelers quarterback was famously estranged from his parents, Ed and Darla, and his brothers, Luke and Jordan, for at least a decade. But on Monday night, Rodgers shared three photos — one with his mom, one with his dad and one with Luke — on Instagram.
He wrote: “Another bonding week #fam.”
Jordan was notably absent from the photos.
In March, Aaron Rodgers talked about his rift with his family on The Pat McAfee Show.
“If you look at the saga with my family, for years it was one-sided,” Rodgers said. “They were making shots in the media saying bullshit. I never said anything until it got to the point where I’m like, ‘All right, enough is enough.’”
His estrangement from his family became public during Jordan Rodgers’ appearance on The Bachelorette in 2016, and Aaron Rodgers discussed it during the 2024 Netflix docuseries, Aaron Rodgers: Enigma.
He pointed to his parents’ strict religious beliefs as a reason for the falling-out.
“I grew up in a very white, dogmatic church and that just didn’t really serve me,” Aaron said. “It was very rigid in structure. I’m not a rigid person. Shame, guilt, judgment. It was like, ‘We have the truth. Our way or the highway. Our way is heaven; your way is hell.’ Even talking to my parents, it was very black and white. Like, somebody has to be wrong, [and] somebody has to be right. I just slowly uncoupled from that in high school.”
The hatchet, though, has apparently been buried, and the past forgotten.
Steelers Clips
When news broke that former NFL running back Le’Veon Bell was arrested in Canton on a warrant from Michigan, there were no details as to the underlying reason for the move. Via Aaron Hughes of the Canton Repository, the arrest happened due to allegedly unpaid child support.
Bell’s lawyer, Thomas Shaffer, told Hughes that Bell’s support payments “inaccurately” reflect his NFL salary.
“Six months ago he cashed in an NFL pension to pay $50,000 in child support for that child,” Shaffer told Hughes. “His guidelines are still inaccurately being deemed based on his NFL salary and his professional boxing career. This is a revolving door because he pays a number that doesn’t reflect his true income. The issue will never end. The court needs to reflect his true income.”
That’s fine, but Bell’s NFL salary ended five years ago. He’s surely not the first person with child-support obligations who had a significant reduction in his income. Whatever the solution, it should have been solved long before Bell was arrested for not paying amounts based on his income from five years ago.
Training camps will be opening soon. Before 2011, that meant most teams engaging in a game of beat the clock with most of their draft picks.
Nowadays, most contracts are signed by Memorial Day weekend.
This year, there are four notable exceptions. They are the first four quarterbacks taken in the draft: Raiders quarterback Fernando Mendoza (first overall), Rams quarterback Ty Simpson (13th overall), Cardinals quarterback Carson Beck (third round, 65th overall), and Steelers quarterback Drew Allar (third round, 76th overall).
There’s not much to negotiate. The dollars are set by a formula based on the draft slot. Pressure points in the past have related to signing bonus cash flow, voiding of guarantees, and offsets on guarantees.
Surely, all of the deals will get done. Rookie holdouts are now very rare.
But no deal is done until it’s done. And it’s getting a little glaring for the first four quarterbacks taken in the draft.
Former NFL running back Le’Veon Bell, who once seemed to be on track to have a bronze bust in Canton, is currently staying in town for a very different reason.
Via Aaron Hughes of the Canton Repository, Bell is currently being held in the Stark County, Ohio jail.
It’s being described as a “courtesy hold for another agency.” Citing court documents, Hughes explains that Bell was arrested on a warrant from Michigan. (It’s unclear why a warrant for his arrest was issued in Michigan.)
Bell had appeared on July 19 at the Belden Village Mall in Jackson Township. He was later arrested.
A second-round pick from Michigan State in 2013, Bell spent five years with the Steelers. He sat out the 2018 season in a franchise-tag dispute. He signed with the Jets in 2019.
Bell was released during the 2020 season and signed with the Chiefs. In 2021, his final NFL season, he played for the Ravens and the Buccaneers.
Veteran cornerback Levi Wallace did not play in the NFL after landing on Jacksonville’s injured reserve list last summer and he won’t be coming back to the field in 2026.
Wallace announced his retirement on Instagram on Friday. Wallace noted that he was undrafted in 2018 and went on to spend eight years in the league, which he termed a “not bad” run in the league.
Wallace signed with the Bills after playing at Alabama and started all 57 regular season and playoff games he played in four seasons with Buffalo. He spent the next two seasons with the Steelers and saw his final game action with the Broncos in 2024.
Wallace had 333 tackles, 12 interceptions, 30 passes defensed and a fumble recovery in 96 career regular season games. He also had 23 tackles, an interception and a sack in six postseason outings.
The Steelers head into the 2026 season with higher hopes for their receiving corps.
DK Metcalf caught 59 passes last season, but the rest of the group only had 77 and the 136 total receptions ranked 31st among receiving groups for the 2025 campaign. The Steelers addressed that shortcoming by trading for Michael Pittman Jr. and drafting two wideouts — second-rounder Germie Bernard and fourth-rounder Kaden Wetjen — in April.
New head coach Mike McCarthy isn’t counting out another returning member of the group, however. 2024 third-rounder Roman Wilson played just one game as a rookie and had 12 catches in 13 appearances last season, but McCarthy said that he liked how Wilson approached the offseason.
“He’s been here from Day 1,” McCarthy said, via Brooke Pryor of ESPN.com. “He was one of the first men to reach out and clearly ask what the expectation was of him, how I view him, how I saw him fitting in as the roles X, F and Z. He’s doing the work. He’s had a great offseason. I just need him to keep showing up and keep working his tail off because he’s got a skill set, there’s a lot there to work with. Roman’s done a really nice job.”
Metcalf and Pittman are going to be the top wideouts to kick off the season in Pittsburgh, but Wilson could find his way into a bigger role if his offseason work continues into training camp and leads to a strong bond with Aaron Rodgers.
An invitation to the Travis Kelce-Taylor Swift wedding was one kind of exclusive. Another recent NFL-related gathering took exclusive to another level.
Steelers quarterback Aaron Rodgers has posted on Instagram a photos of a gathering with six of his Steelers teammates: Michael Pittman Jr., Ben Skowronek, Roman Wilston, Mason Rudolph, DK Metcalf, and Pat Freiermuth.
The caption is “Last Rodeo,” along with "#bondingweek.”
The images include horses, cowboy hats, and campfires. The setting wide open and outdoors, with strong to quite strong Teton River vibes.
Rodgers has said this will be his final season. The “Last Rodeo” label further confirm it, setting up the 2026 season to be the rare full-season farewell tour for a franchise quarterback.
In what he says will be his final NFL season, Steelers quarterback Aaron Rodgers is in pursuit of a statistical milestone reached by only four other quarterbacks in NFL history.
Rodgers could top the 70,000-yard mark for his NFL career.
Heading into 2026, Rodgers has 66,274 career passing yards, so he needs 3,726 passing yards to reach the 70,000-yard milestone this season. That’s right around what Rodgers has been getting when healthy in recent years: He threw for 3,695 yards in 2022 in his final season with the Packers, threw for 3,897 yards in 2024 in his only healthy season with the Jets, and threw for 3,322 yards last year in his first season with the Steelers.
The odds at DraftKings have Rodgers as +200 to throw for at least 3,726 yards and finish with at least 70,000.
Greg Hawthorne, the Steelers’ first-round pick in 1979, has died. He was 69.
A member of the Super Bowl XIV-winning team, Hawthorne spent five seasons in Pittsburgh. He then played for the Patriots for three seasons, before finishing his career in Indianapolis in 1987 as a three-game replacement player during the strike.
Hawthorne played running back, receiver, and tight end during his eight-year NFL career. He finished with 527 rushing yards, 1,112 receiving yards, and 11 touchdowns.
In the 1985 AFC Championship upset of the Dolphins, Hawthorne recovered a fumble on the opening kickoff of the second half, setting up a touchdown that gave New England a 24-7 lead. The Patriots went on to upset Miami for a berth in Super Bowl XX, 31-14.
With 22,000 seats replaced at Acrisure Stadium, more new ones are coming.
Via Adam Babetski of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, the Pittsburgh Sports and Exhibition Authority has approved funding for nearly 18,000 new seats at the place where the Steelers and Panthers play their home games.
The request was made last year to swap out 58,719 of the 68,400 seats at Acrisure Stadium. Many of the original seats were deteriorating.
The new seats will consist of a blend between yellow (85 percent) and gray (15 percent), somewhat numbing the glare from the venue when empty.
“The sea of gold sometimes gets overwhelming, so we did a little black and gold in there this time around,” Steelers owner Art Rooney II said earlier this year.
The old seats have been sold, with more than $100,000 already generated and more than $100,000 more expected.
