Some NFL teams would have already moved on from Aaron Rodgers.
Not the Pittsburgh Steelers, who are still clinging to the hope that a 41-year-old quarterback can be the answer to their Super Bowl dreams in 2025.
While the future Hall of Famer keeps making Pittsburgh wait during offseason team workouts, the Steelers’ ‘Rodgers or bust’ mentality has confused many fans.
Pittsburgh is known for top-down consistency and team-first culture.
The daily pursuit of Rodgers — while Mason Rudolph, Will Howard and Skylar Thompson are listed on the club’s depth chart — can appear at odds with the trademarks of Steeler football.
So who’s driving the push to wrap Rodgers in black and gold, and willing to wait months for an eventual decision?
“One thing that this organization has been good at for years, decades, is presenting a united front,” Brian Batko, Steelers beat writer for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, exclusively told talkSPORT.
“When Kevin Colbert was in that GM chair, it was the same way. When Art Rooney II’s father, Dan Rooney, was the team president, it was the same way.
“So it’s never been a situation where there’s a lot of palace intrigue, because they’re pretty buttoned up that way. But there’s got to be internal disagreements from time to time.”
The Minnesota Vikings could have gone all-in on Rodgers, who’s thrown 503 career touchdown passes but went just 6-12 in two years with the New York Jets.
Instead, a team that went 14-3 last year is now in the hands of unproven QB J.J. McCarthy, who’s set for his first NFL start in Week 1 against the Chicago Bears.
“There’s a reason why we selected him (McCarthy), and the belief that we’ve had in him goes back even before making that selection,” Vikings head coach Kevin O’Connell said.
GettyHe’ll be surrounded by a lot of talent if he joins the Steelers[/caption]
Yet the Steelers entered the week ready to bench Rudolph immediately — if Rodgers finally makes up his mind and extends his career in Pittsburgh.
Mike Tomlin is the longest-tenured head coach in the NFL, now that Bill Belichick is coaching college football.
Batko said that the Steelers have been ‘coach-centric’ dating back to Chuck Noll and Bill Cowher.
As OTAs wrap up and a mandatory minicamp approaches on June 10, one man has been at the center of Pittsburgh’s continued belief that Rodgers is the team’s best option at QB in 2025.
“The owner trusts the coach with a lot,” Bakto said.
“You look at some teams where the GM buys all the ingredients and tells the coach to make the stew. I think with the Steelers, the coach is buying the ingredients, too. He just wants the GM there to make sure they’re getting the best deals and discounts at the supermarket.
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“So I do think that Mike Tomlin is running point on this. And I think their general manager Omar Khan, his job right now is more about setting up this team for the long term to be a good plug-and-play situation for the next quarterback, regardless of how things play out — good or bad — with Aaron Rodgers.”
With the start of training camp an estimated 50 days away, Rodgers is missing out on critical practice time during OTAs and the ability to create on-field rhythm with his potential new teammates.
“Training camp certainly would be kind of the absolute finish line for when you need to start installing this stuff and going through padded practices,” Batko said.
That could create a situation where some Steelers are increasingly turned off by the pursuit of Rodgers, and the future Hall of Famer could be forced to win over new teammates with little prep time for Week 1.
“That’s the paradox of this whole deal,” Batko said.
“He has been around long enough to know how invaluable these spring reps are for getting on the same page with guys. And he’s a quarterback who some of the biggest headlines that have come out of him with the Jets, and even the Packers toward the tail end, was about getting the timing right — why he sort of wants his guys with him a lot.
“It has loomed over a bunch of other guys who probably are sick of getting questions from their own friends and family about who their quarterback is going to be in ’25.”
Rodgers has earned more than $380 million in his 20-year career, which bounced from Green Bay to New York, just like Brett Favre’s.
The No. 24 overall pick (California) of the 2005 NFL Draft has thrown for 62,952 yards and won four NFL MVPs.
As of Tuesday, the wait continued for Rodgers, the Steelers and Tomlin.
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