Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Aaron Rodgers is on his third team. Will this one work better than his second? (Gene J. Puskar/AP)
Aaron Rodgers is joining a Pittsburgh Steelers team long defined by consistency but starved for high-level quarterback play since Ben Roethlisberger’s retirement three years ago. Is the 41-year-old future Hall of Famer the answer?
After a debut season with the New York Jets erased by injury and an underwhelming performance in his second season in New York, Rodgers enters 2025 with questions about his health, mobility and fit within offensive coordinator Arthur Smith’s system. Still, his arrival would also seem to signal Pittsburgh’s intention to compete now in a contentious AFC North that includes quarterbacks Joe Burrow and Lamar Jackson. With a revamped receiving corps and a coaching staff under pressure to deliver, Rodgers could be either the short-term spark the Steelers need or a high-risk bet that stalls the franchise’s long-term quarterback plan.
So how might this work? Before we begin, let’s dispel any notion that Rodgers’s decline began with the Achilles’ tear that ended his 2023 season four snaps into his New York debut. That lets him off too easily. The decline began in 2022, his final year in Green Bay, when he ranked 26th in ESPN’s total quarterback rating and produced the lowest passer rating of his starting career to that point. In 2024, with impressive Jets wide receivers Garrett Wilson and Davante Adams (for 11 games) at his disposal, Rodgers finished 25th in QBR and completed passes at a rate five percentage points lower than we would expect based on their difficulty, per the NFL’s NextGen stats.
That should be expected. While passers can maintain peak performance longer than players at most other positions, decline is inevitable, especially after age 35. Studies from Pro Football Focus and academic analyses of NFL performance metrics such as expected points added per play, adjusted net yards per attempt and completion percentage over expected suggest a gradual drop-off that begins around age 31 and accelerates after age 37. Only a handful of quarterbacks have remained even average at 40 and beyond. The most famous of them, Tom Brady and Drew Brees, are the rare outliers. Rodgers, meanwhile, turns 42 in December, so any season-long projections for him should be modest, at best.
Still, before Rodgers signed, the Steelers entered the 2025 season with a quarterback group ranked among the weakest in the league. Mason Rudolph, signed to a two-year deal, posted an 80.1 passer rating and 55.5 QBR in eight games (five starts) for the Tennessee Titans last season. Behind him is seasoned backup Skylar Thompson, 28, with three career NFL starts, and rookie Will Howard, a sixth-round pick and developmental prospect who reportedly impressed during minicamp.
It wouldn’t take much for Rodgers to be the best quarterback option in the room. As a four‑time MVP with a Super Bowl title, his ability to break down defenses and call plays at the line — which shouldn’t be impacted by age — will be a huge asset. His quick release — 2.69 seconds on average last season, still the sixth fastest in the NFL — fits particularly well behind a developing offensive line.
Additionally, Pittsburgh has been planning for Rodgers’s arrival and reportedly is willing to adapt its playbook to his strengths. And that revamped offense features an assortment of talent, although there are also reasons to be skeptical.
Wideout DK Metcalf posted 66 receptions for 992 yards and five touchdowns in 2024 before the offseason trade brought him to Pittsburgh. However, his route running is perhaps not ideal. Matt Harmon of Yahoo Sports, who charts NFL wide receiver production, said of Metcalf: “Sometimes he looks like an elite receiver, and sometimes he looks like a volatile, frustrating X.” Pro Football Focus ranked Metcalf 31st in route running last season out of 38 wide receivers targeted at least 100 times. Rodgers has publicly criticized his receivers for poor route running in the past, so you have to wonder how it will go between Metcalf and Rodgers on game days.
After Metcalf, it starts to get thin on the depth chart. Calvin Austin III is the second-highest-rated wideout on the team, per Pro Football Focus’s 2024 grade, at No. 79. At tight end, veteran Pat Freiermuth remains the top target. He hauled in 65 of 78 targets for 653 yards and seven touchdowns last season.
Smith is known for a conservative offensive scheme with a run-heavy foundation, play-action passing and two-tight-end sets. Rodgers has a history of protecting the ball — his turnover-worthy throw rate was tied for the fourth lowest last season, per PFF — and his air yards per attempt in 2024 were 6.8, equaling the lowest figure of his career. He looked for a receiver deep down the field (20 or more yards) just 11 percent of the time, his lowest figure since 2014. That would offer a departure from the Steelers’ offense under Russell Wilson, who averaged 7.7 air yards per attempt and attempted a deep pass 13.7 percent of the time last season. (Metcalf received 32 of his 108 targets last season — about 30 percent — deep down the field.)
On the other hand, Rodgers has consistently thrived in play-action, finishing in the top 15 in play-action passer rating six times and in the top two in three separate seasons, per data from Pro Football Focus. Despite a dip in 2024, when he posted a 93.2 passer rating when using play-action — his lowest figure since 2019 — he still ranked seventh in total play-action attempts.
In two-tight-end sets, also known as 12 personnel, Rodgers was below average last season, earning 5.8 net yards per attempt. The league average was 7.3, per data from TruMedia.
“You evolve with who you have personnel-wise, and strategically there are things you want to evolve to,” Smith said. “A lot of times that’s how rosters are made — offseason acquisitions, free agency, the draft. I’ve had a lot of different quarterbacks with a lot of different skill sets. Your job as a coach is to play to the strengths of your players. You adapt to the personnel you have.”
So what is the bottom line? To project Rodgers’s 2025 season with the Steelers, I began by fitting a regression model to historical quarterback data to estimate expected points added per play based on age and career efficiency. Rodgers was assigned a higher baseline because of his prior elite career performance and given a slight positive adjustment to reflect historical overperformance relative to peers. I then used the expected points added per play over 550 projected pass attempts to infer a stat line of passing yards, touchdowns and interceptions. The final estimate of 3,795 passing yards with 28 touchdowns and 10 interceptions — assuming he plays a full season — reflects a realistic estimate of Rodgers’s production in a new environment. That outlook could be impacted by further decline, his own health, injuries to teammates and so on.
“We’re excited about him being here. He’s excited about being here,” Steelers Coach Mike Tomlin said last week. “But we’ll make no bold predictions. We’re just going to roll our sleeves up and go to work and let our efforts do the talking.”
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