The Steelers still don’t know for sure if they will have Aaron Rodgers. If they do, though, Aditi Kinkhabwala believes they will get his best. At least from a physical point of view, he is in a much different place from the past two seasons.
Rodgers is a future Hall-of-Fame quarterback, but he hasn’t played like it. Since 2022, he is averaging 3,688 yards for 26 touchdowns and 11 interceptions per 17 games. Oh, and he has a 14-21 record, going back to his final season with the Packers. The Steelers counted on a renaissance for Russell Wilson last year, too, and didn’t quite get it. Or at least, if they did, it didn’t last long enough to matter.
But Wilson wasn’t coming off a major injury. Aaron Rodgers ruptured his Achilles tendon in the 2023 opener. While he returned to play all 17 games for the Jets last year, he wasn’t all the way back physically. That is Kinkhabwala’s perception based on the numerous conversations she had with him during the season during her work for CBS Sports.
“Aaron Rodgers was still coming off of that injury”, she emphasized during an interview on 93.7 The Fan. “As we had him during the season, he kept talking about feeling significantly better. I expect him to, this year, be significantly better than he was last year, physically. It’s just the … added year of post-injury that should have an impact”.
While Rodgers improved statistically over the course of the season, analysts still don’t think he played well. While it’s not unreasonable to think he will play better a full season removed from the injury, it’s not clear where the ceiling is. Still, Kinkhabwala argues the Jets’ issues had many more causes than Rodgers.
“As much as Aaron Rodgers struggled record-wise last year, there was a lot more wrong with the Jets than the play at quarterback”, she said. “There were a lot of limitations. There were a lot of ways that he was hamstrung and challenged, not the least of which was his coach getting fired out of nowhere, the offensive staff completely changing. The defense did not uphold its end of the bargain a lot”.
The Jets are, of course, largely a dysfunctional organization. If you know any Jets fans, go ahead and ask them what they think of Woody Johnson. Granted, a lot of Steelers fans are not thrilled with Art Rooney II, either. And they aren’t thrilled with the Steelers sitting on their hands waiting for Aaron Rodgers, either.
But that is indeed what they’re doing, even if we are in the dark about where things stand. That doesn’t stop everybody from trying to speculate about who knows what and when they learned it, though. Has Aaron Rodgers given the Steelers an informal agreement, or a timeline? Will he be there for OTAs or mandatory minicamp? He hasn’t signed a contract, so until he does, minicamp isn’t mandatory.
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