What Would Aaron Rodgers Bring to Steelers?
It’s March 23rd and one of the biggest questions around the league is who will be throwing the football in the Steel City next season? It sounds like we are inching closer to finding that answer as four-time Most Valuable Player, Aaron Rodgers completed a lengthy visit to the South Side to meet with the Pittsburgh Steelers brass. With other options evaporated, both parties are left without a date to the dance. If looking through the lens of the immediate future, both sides need each other now more than ever. But is this a really a pairing that at least makes some semblance of sense?
After being released by the New York Jets on March 12th, this is the first time in his career that Rodgers is a free agent and he seems to be soaking up that opportunity by taking his time to figure out his future. He definitely doesn’t need the cash, he’s extremely well represented in the history books and has a championship ring to boot. With that in mind, it’s easy to understand that there’s a likely a giant chip on his shoulder after his time in the Big Apple ended in such a cataclysmic failure. After tearing his achilles in the 2023 campaign, he returned to the field with many placing high expectations on his ability to lead a desperate franchise back into the limelight. Instead, a tumultuous season full of tough losses ensued with a 5-12 finish, causing all of the prominent individuals in the building to lose their jobs.
Rodgers threw for 3,897 yards, 28 touchdowns and 11 interceptions with baseline numbers closely resembling those during his farewell tour during his final season in Green Bay. He will turn 42-years old during the December stretch run and while one of the greatest peaks we’ve ever witnessed is in the rear view mirror, is there enough left in the tank for one last hurrah? Here’s what the film says.
Where Rodgers Wins
For starters, Rodgers can absolutely still spin it. Not just because his arm itself still has plenty of juice, but because he can effortlessly generate torque from the ground up through his hips. In Week 6, he laced a cover-2 hole shot down the sideline to Mike Williams, in case you need concrete video evidence. Even at his age, his whippy release is a superpower and remains the gold standard for the quarterback position, one that many have started to emulate but fail to duplicate. Rodgers loves quick game concepts and plays the position with a sense of timing that is admirable, evidenced by his 2.65 time to throw average from 2024, per PFF. This approach founded on punctuality does take stress off his offensive line.
His drop has pace and the feet are regularly tied to the concept, allowing him to throw with good anticipation on outside the numbers throws such as curls and out routes. Arguably his favorite throw is his arsenal is the slant route where he’ll ever so casually flaunt his velocity to fit the ball into tight crevices. Rodgers is a gifted touch thrower who can layer the ball over second level defenders in zone coverage. His football acumen still pops on tape. You’ll regularly see him burn defenses that deploy post-snap coverage rotations and he used shots up the seam as a way to punish those looks. The former first-round pick from 2005 loves to play mind games with his opponents, using tempo and cadence to draw offsides penalties. The San Francisco 49ers were quickly reminded of this in his return from injury as Rodgers launched a 36-yard bomb to Allan Lazard on a free play.
Coordinators are still leery of giving him single-high looks, knowing how well he reads defender leverage to deceiver whether he wants to feather a go-ball over the top or sit his receiver down on a back-shoulder. When Rodgers is under center, there’s some hidden value in terms of how he helps the run game. He’s a general at the line of scrimmage that is confident in his ability to get his unit in the best play possible. On run calls, his release allows him to raise up quickly to fire a laser outside of cornerbacks are giving free access on the boundary and he’s a machine in the RPO-realm for those same reasons. His ball-handling is real wizardry and can leave linebackers dazed and confused.
So…after all of that, you are probably left wondering how in the world is it possible that Rodgers finished the season 19th in EPA/play and 24th in success rate. Like anything involving the enigmatic signal caller, it’s complicated.
Areas of Concern
Even though his arm talent is still an asset, his athleticism has really declined to a point where it’s legitimately a concern at this point in his career. Those subtle, quick twitch movements inside the pocket to find space for himself and allow him the freedom to get a throw off look mostly like a thing of the past. There were times where it looked like his feet were in quicksand at the top of his drop and on the plays where he opted to try and get outside the pocket to create out of structure, he was regularly getting caught by defensive lineman in pursuit. The wheels are good enough to execute the bootleg play-action game but outside of that, it’s rough. This really isn’t surprising considering we’re talking about some one of the oldest passers in league history.
With that being said, there were some areas of struggle that were particularly confusing. Rodgers, historically an excellent decision maker that plays a rather risk-averse style of ball, was oddly fooled multiple times last season. Perhaps the best example of this came in Week 4 against the Broncos when trying to orchestrate a game-winning drive: Denver sent a safety blitz but Rodgers was seemingly unaware that he was hot on the play and took a sack that ended the game. Even more concerning was that the same exact thing happened two weeks later against the Minnesota Vikings during a game in London, one that would conclude with the firing of head coach Robert Saleh. Speaking of hot answers, defensive coordinators caught on to his preference to throw slants in those situations and started dropping guys into those windows.
There were some rough turn downs on tape, especially considering his magic as a creator has faded. For as much of an anticipatory thrower as Rodgers is outside the numbers, that isn’t the case over the middle of the field. On the rare occasion that these were called, he was either late or just flat-out unwilling to trigger on throws such as hi-low/digs in the intermediate area of the field.
The most surprising revelation when watching his film from this past season was his regression in the accuracy department. There’s a jarring amount of layup misses on tape. If you’ve never watched him play before, it would be easy to point these misses back to his lower body mechanics, particularly his footwork considering how often he’s not properly aligned to his target. But that’s the thing: his ability to make those off-platform throws was his calling card during his prime. All of this led me to create an accuracy profile, using on-target metrics via SIS and then comparing those to other NFL quarterbacks. The results were unfortunately unkind and matched the eye test.
In 2024, Rodgers was charted as being on-target on 78.3% of his passes on short throws (23rd), 63.0% on intermediate tosses (20th), 50.0% when going deep (15th), 67.2% under pressure (11th), 62.1% past the sticks (22nd), 68.2% when throwing on the move (26th) and 69.9% when working outside the pocket (16th).
Sports Info Solutions defines being on-target as hitting a receiver in stride, regardless of whether the pass is completed or not. It discards things such as throwaways, batted passes, miscommunications between players or if a receiver slips out of his break. Basically, it eliminates things that are mostly out of the quarterbacks control as it relates to accurate throws.
Analyzing the Fit
Moving forward, there’s really two questions that need to be answered. The first of which is figuring out the elements of his game that can be sustained or revived? At this stage, common sense tells us that he’s going to be primarily a stationary pocket passer next season but it’s fair to wonder if some of the accuracy stuff could be contributed back to rust seeing as he missed an entire year of play. If that’s the case, Rodgers would still need to prove that he’s willing to stare down the barrel of the gun and push the ball down the field into tight windows knowing that he’s going to take a shot as soon as the ball leaves his hand. Too often last season he seemed fidgety in the pocket, preferring to prematurely check the ball down instead of going through his progressions. At his age, it’s probably more painful for his body to absorb those shots to the chest from 300-pound defenders.
The obvious caveat is that if the Steelers do opt to roll with Rodgers under center, they’re running his offense consisting of static formations without much motion built in. That means get ready for a lot of dragon/lion/omaha quick game concepts with the shot plays down the field as a chaser. It’s easy to envision him being a good pairing for the newly acquired DK Metcalf, who would feast on those slants over the middle. While not a big part of his game last season, Rodgers would surely be fired up to take advantage of George Pickens body control along the sideline. We’ve all been dying for Pittsburgh to work Pat Freiermuth up the seams more to get him even more touches. Even though you don’t want to see an excessive amount of check downs, Jaylen Warren and Kenneth Gainwell are reliable operators in that phase. The only thing missing would be another quick win route runner that could separate versus man coverage to pair with the vertical threats outside.
Peak Rodgers is a mere memory at this stage of his career, but every now and then you see the flashes of what he used to be at the peak of his powers. The question is if he can get back to doing at least some of those things a little more consistently.
For a Steelers team searching for its first postseason win since 2016, they’d be banking on him getting hot at the right time down the stretch. If he stays healthy, there’s a reality in which things go well enough for them to compete for a playoff berth. There’s also a chance that this is the year that things finally fall off a cliff and leads to the floor bottoming out from underneath them. No matter the outcome, you can guarantee it won’t be boring.