Saunders: Why Will It Be Different This Time for Steelers?
For the fourth time since the retirement of Ben Roethlisberger just four years ago, the Pittsburgh Steelers have a new starting quarterback, as the club agreed to a one-year contract with veteran starter Aaron Rodgers on Thursday.
Rodgers becomes the Steelers’ presumptive starting quarterback for this season, following Mitch Trubisky, Kenny Pickett and Russell Wilson in that role. While the 41-year-old Rodgers is a four-time MVP, his best days are well behind him. He’s unlikely to be the quarterback that gets the Steelers back into Super Bowl contention.
Over each of the last two offseasons, the Steelers have completely revamped their quarterback room, jettisoning Trubisky, Pickett and Mason Rudolph from 2023 for Wilson, Justin Fields and Kyle Allen last year. This year, Rudolph is back to backup Rodgers, along with sixth-round draft pick Will Howard.
So it’s another full refresh. With another retread veteran, who once again is past his prime, was cut by his last team, and once again, appears unlikely to be even a short-term answer in terms of Super Bowl contention.
Why should the Steelers expect different results from doing the same thing?
They probably should’t. There are specific differences between Rodgers and some of his predecessors that might come in handy, specifically Wilson, whose inability to use the middle of the field made him a poor fit for the tight end-obsessed Arthur Smith’s offensive scheme. Smith also didn’t necessarily make the most of the mobility that Wilson and Fields provided last year, so Rodgers’ largest downside might not be that big of a deal.
But on the whole, Rodgers’ signing likely won’t significantly move the needle in terms of the Steelers’ 2025 fate. Their odds to with the AFC North remain a static 5/1, despite signing Rodgers on Thursday evening. Their Super Bowl-winning odds and odds to make the playoffs did shorten slightly. But the impact was not massive.
In short, expect another season stuck in the middle for the Steelers: not a bad team, but not good enough, especially in an AFC loaded with elite quarterbacks like Patrick Mahomes, Joe Burrow, Lamar Jackson and Josh Allen.
Which leads many to question, if that’s the outlook — why bother? Rudolph likely could have seen the Steelers to a season approaching .500. And even if he couldn’t, would that be such a bad thing? The Steelers’ 21-year stretch of not having a losing season has prevented them from having the kind of draft capital that teams usually need to find a quarterback that can compete with the likes of the AFC’s best.
But you don’t have to be bad to get there. Mike Tomlin first tipped off the Steelers’ plan way back in January, when I asked him if he thought it might be necessary for the team to first take a step backward, in order to take a step forward.
“Lamar wasn’t taken and the top of the draft,” he said. “[Jalen] Hurts wasn’t taken in the first round.”
No, the Steelers won’t be tanking, not under Tomlin’s watch and likely not under the eyes of Art Rooney II, either. It’s just not something they believe it. Nor, I will add, has it ever worked at the NFL level.
Yes, the Bengals landed Burrow with the first-overall pick after a miserable season in 2019. But the Bengals were in the midst of a stretch of five straight losing seasons, and even with Burrow and all those other high draft picks, they’ve won just as many Super Bowls as the Steelers have with their unappealing collection of passers in that time.
But drafting quarterbacks late in the first round is tough sledding, as the Steelers found out with their big swing and a miss on Pickett in 2022. The last quarterback to be taken after pick No. 15 in the first round with any success was Jordan Love for Green Bay in 2020. Before that, Jackson in 2018 and all the way back to Joe Flacco in 2008. Three in 17 years isn’t exactly a great track record to be betting on.
When you look at those dominant AFC quarterbacks, though, another trend emerges. The Chiefs traded up to get Mahomes in 2017. The next year, the Bills traded up to get Allen.
That is a plan the Steelers can execute. In fact, they did it a year after Allen, in 2019. Only then-general manager Kevin Colbert traded up 10 spots from No. 20 to No. 10, just to draft an off-ball linebacker, horrific positional value for the selection. It didn’t help that Devin Bush didn’t even work out as well as he might have at the position.
In the 2020 NFL Draft, Colbert traded his first-round pick, the first time in modern Steelers history, for Minkah Fitzpatrick. Fitzpatrick has been a multiple time Pro Bowl free safety with the Steelers, but Love was taken just eight picks after the Steelers’ selection.
The Steelers have shown a willingness to wheel and deal in the first round of the NFL Draft, they just haven’t yet done it to address the game’s most important position.
To help that cause, general manager Omar Khan set out on a distinct tact during the 2025 offseason. With two quarterbacks heading to free agency and only one expected to be signed at the most, and left tackle Dan Moore also being shown the door, the Steelers had the chance to land a haul in compensatory draft picks.
They did that and then some, also letting Fields go in addition to Wilson, when the Jets offer got too rich for their blood. Fields was added to the pile, giving the team a projected four comp picks in rounds three through six for 2026. Khan added to that pile, and helped his team’s chemistry by shipping off permanently peeved wide receiver George Pickens to the Dallas Cowboys for another third-rounder.
Khan also targeted carefully in free agency, finding ways to avoid signing players that would reduce the team’s comp pick return. Between Fields earning the Steelers a comp pick and Rodgers not costing them one because he was cut by the New York Jets, you can clearly see how the compensatory pick formula factored into the Steelers’ choice of quarterback.
“You guys are intelligent people, you guys can kind of read through it and see it, but the fact that we’ve had the opportunity acquire picks – I don’t know exactly how it’s going to shake out yet – but that’s obviously been something we’ve been taking into consideration,” Khan said at the NFL Owner’s Meetings back in March.
Now with a projected five extra 2026 draft picks, the Steelers have the assets they need to make a move up to get a quarterback. It also just so happens that the 2026 NFL Draft class appears to be uniquely deep with first-round quarterbacks, so they might not have to get as high in the draft to land a franchise guy as they would have in some years. Oh yeah, and next year’s draft is being held in Pittsburgh.
Rodgers probably won’t get the Steelers to the Super Bowl in 2025. He might make them a little bit more likely to make or win a playoff game. But the work that Khan did earlier in the offseason means there’s little downside to trying. Either the Rodgers move will pay off, and the Steelers will finally break through their eight-year streak of playoff fruitlessness, or Rodgers will struggle with the transition to his 42-year-old season. Either way, the Steelers will have what they need to get their quarterback of the future.
The Steelers have plenty of veteran players, especially on defense, that deserve a chance to try to win a Super Bowl ring, like Cam Heyward, T.J. Watt and Fitzpatrick. What Khan has done is eliminate the downside of trying to do what the team can to help those players try to win, while at the same time maintaining perspective on the big-picture plan to find the next top quarterback.