Realistic expectations may not be set that high for 2026, but the Pittsburgh Steelers now officially have a coach-quarterback duo that has won a Super Bowl together already.
With Aaron Rodgers now officially heading back to the Steelers for a second season as their starting quarterback, holding off retirement for another year, he's also re-uniting with a familiar face in Mike McCarthy.
Rodgers and McCarthy experienced some of the peak years of their careers together — in Pittsburgh, they're looking to rekindle some of the magic they found with the Green Bay Packers.
Here's a look at Rodgers' history with McCarthy.
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Aaron Rodgers-Mike McCarthy relationship timeline
Rodgers and McCarthy spent over a decade in Green Bay together, where they each found the majority of their career success.
2006: Mike McCarthy hired by Packers in Rodgers' second season
In January 2006, with the Packers seeking a Mike Sherman replacement, they turned to their former quarterbacks coach, who was coming off a stint as the San Francisco 49ers’ offensive coordinator.
McCarthy inherited a four-win team with plenty of quarterback talent — Rodgers was still the young backup to Brett Favre at the time, coming off his 2005 rookie season in which he made just three game appearances.
McCarthy, with a background in quarterback development, is largely credited with Rodgers’ early-career development as a backup after being a first-round pick in 2005. The coach was known to work behind the scenes with Rodgers on his mechanics, which eventually led to him becoming an NFL star following Favre’s departure.
In McCarthy’s debut season in 2006, the Packers finished 8-8. Both Favre and Rodgers dealt with injuries; the latter was filling in for Favre in November when he broke his left foot, missing the rest of the season.
Favre returned as Green Bay’s QB1 in 2007, further delaying Rodgers’ chance to become the starter. The Packers went 13-3 and lost to the Giants in the NFC Championship Game that season.
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2008: Aaron Rodgers takes over for Brett Favre
After McCarthy’s Year 2 success with the Packers, he was given a five-year extension in January 2008 — and shortly after, Rodgers became his new starting quarterback. With Favre initially retiring, then backtracking and being traded to the New York Jets, Green Bay handed the keys to its offense to its young backup. In Year 1 as a coach-quarterback duo, Rodgers and McCarthy led the Packers to a 6-10 record, missing the playoffs. Rodgers did show some promise, however, eclipsing 4,000 passing yards with 28 touchdowns and 13 interceptions.
During the season, Rodgers also signed a six-year extension with Green Bay, which kept him and McCarthy in town for the long term.
2009: First Rodgers-McCarthy playoff trip
A five-game win streak at the end of the 2009 season led to Rodgers making his first playoff appearance with the Packers.
With an 11-5 record, Green Bay earned the NFC's top wild card spot as the No. 5 seed. In the regular season, the team set a new franchise record by scoring 461 total points, with Rodgers also becoming the first quarterback to throw for over 4,000 yards in their first two NFL seasons as a starter; he put up 4,434 passing yards and 30 touchdown passes in 2009, named a Pro Bowler for the first time.
However, in the Wild Card round of the playoffs, the Packers lost a shootout to Kurt Warner and the Arizona Cardinals, 51-45.
2010: Super Bowl win over Rodgers-McCarthy duo's future team
The second playoff trip of the Packers’ Rodgers-McCarthy era was the pinnacle.
Despite dealing with a lot of injuries, Green Bay won 10 games to make the NFC playoffs as the No. 6 seed.
The Packers then proceeded to go on a run, taking down the Philadelphia Eagles 21-16 in the Wild Card round, the top-seeded Atlanta Falcons 48-21 in the Divisional Round, and the second-seeded Chicago Bears, who had won the NFC North, 21-14 in the NFC Championship Game.
Green Bay booked a trip to Super Bowl XLV, with Rodgers playing some of the best football of his young career. And while neither knew it at the time, he and McCarthy would face off against their future team: the Steelers.
In the Super Bowl, the Packers took down Pittsburgh 31-25, with Rodgers being named Super Bowl MVP for totaling 304 yards and three touchdowns. In the entire 2010 postseason, he became the third player in NFL history to pass for over 1,000 yards in a single playoff run.
Rodgers and McCarthy secured a ring — although it wound up being their only Super Bowl appearance, despite plenty more wins in their future. It was the fourth Packers Super Bowl win ever, and first since 1996.
2011: Green Bay goes 15-1, Rodgers wins MVP
Green Bay, in its Super Bowl defense, had a dominant 2011 regular season. The Packers went 15-1, leading the NFL in points as Rodgers won MVP by throwing for 4,643 yards and 45 touchdowns, setting numerous franchise records.
Despite becoming just the fifth-ever team to finish the regular season at 15-1 and setting a franchise record for points in a season, the Packers failed to get past the divisional round. They lost to the eventual champion Giants, 37-20, becoming the first team in NFL history to win at least 15 games, then not win the Super Bowl.
2012-16: NFC North dominance, but playoff struggles
The 2011 season was a bit of an omen for the remainder of the McCarthy-Rodgers era of the Packers: plenty of success in the regular season as one of the NFL's premiere teams, but a lack of deep postseason runs to show for it after the 2010 title run.
Green Bay won the NFC North in 2012, 2013 and 2014, but fell to the 49ers in the 2012 and 2013 playoffs, then lost to the Seattle Seahawks in the 2014 NFC Championship Game.
In each of those seasons, Rodgers led the Packers as one of the league's elite offenses; he signed a $110 million extension in 2013 that made him the highest-paid player in NFL history at the time, and in 2014, he won his second MVP award by throwing for 4,381 yards, 38 touchdowns and five interceptions.
Despite all of that success, another Super Bowl appearance evaded Green Bay. The closest it got in that span was in 2014, when the Packers led the Seahawks 19–7 with just over five minutes to go in the NFC title game — but they blew that lead and lose in overtime, 28-22.
During the 2014 season, McCarthy also earned another extension, and he moved into second-place in all-time Packers coaching wins.
In 2015, Green Bay was a wild-card team in the NFC, but lost to the Cardinals in the divisional round.
The following year, the Packers reclaimed the NFC North title at 10-6, with McCarthy becoming the fourth head coach in NFL history to take his team to eight-plus consecutive playoff appearances. But in the playoffs, after beating the Giants and Cowboys, Green Bay fell in the NFC Championship Game once again to the Falcons.
Rodgers dealt with injuries in 2017, and for the first time since 2008, Green Bay missed the playoffs at 7-9.
2018: McCarthy fired mid-season by Packers
The years-worth of pre-Super Bowl playoff exits certainly played a role, but just one missed playoff berth wound up being enough justification for McCarthy to lose his job with the Packers.
In 2018, the team was off to a 4-7-1 start through 12 games when it fired its longtime head coach after 13 seasons. McCarthy finished his time with the Packers with a 125–77–2 (.618) regular season record and a 10–8 (.556) postseason record, including the one Super Bowl title and nine playoff appearances.
"The 2018 season has not lived up to the expectations and standards of the Green Bay Packers. As a result, I made the difficult decision to relieve Mike McCarthy of his role as head coach, effective immediately," Packers president Mark Murphy said in a statement, per ESPN. "Mike has been a terrific head coach and leader of the Packers for 13 seasons, during which time we experienced a great deal of success on and off the field. We want to thank Mike, his wife, Jessica, and the rest of the McCarthy family for all that they have done for the Packers and the Green Bay and Wisconsin communities. We will immediately begin the process of selecting the next head coach of the Green Bay Packers."
McCarthy would take a one-year hiatus from coaching in 2019 before joining the Dallas Cowboys as head coach in 2020.
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2022: McCarthy returns to Green Bay with Cowboys, faces Rodgers
In the years after McCarthy's departure from the Packers, there was only one time that his Cowboys team faced off against his former quarterback, Rodgers. In Week 10 of the 2022 season, Dallas traveled to Green Bay, with McCarthy going back to Lambeau Field for the first time.
Rodgers, still the star of the Packers at the time but continuing to deal with elite regular-season success, then playoff flameouts, was in his final year in Green Bay. The team had drafted Jordan Love as a developmental first-round backup, similar to his former situation with Favre, and he had built some tension with the franchise over the years of coming up short in the NFC bracket.
In that Week 10 game, however, Rodgers got the best of McCarthy in overtime. The Packers took down the Cowboys 31-28, with Rodgers throwing for 224 yards and three touchdowns, winning on a field goal in the extra period.
Aaron Rodgers and Mike McCarthy share a hug and a few words before today’s game pic.twitter.com/qUIfn2e1Dn
— Jon Machota (@jonmachota) November 13, 2022
2026: McCarthy, Rodgers re-unite in Pittsburgh
With Rodgers heading to the AFC's New York Jets in 2023, but being out with his torn Achilles for a Week 2 matchup against McCarthy's Cowboys, then McCarthy parting ways with Dallas after the 2024 season, the coach and quarterback never went head-to-head again.
Rodgers took his aging talents to the Steelers in the 2025 offseason after an unsuccessful stint in New York, while McCarthy spent another year away from coaching. But the 2026 offseason has brought the Super Bowl-winning coach and passer together again.
Retirement was a very real possibility for Rodgers, who did post solid numbers (3,322 yards, 24 TDs, 7 INTs) in 2025 for the Steelers, but as the offseason unfolded, it became clear that he'd be returning as Pittsburgh's QB1 in 2026 for at least one more year. Likely only aiding in that decision was the fact that the Steelers, following Mike Tomlin's resignation, brought in a familiar face at head coach.
McCarthy, who is from Pittsburgh, was hired by the Steelers in January 2026.
"Yes, it would be a great story," McCarthy previously said of a potential Rodgers reunion in Pittsburgh. "I don't know -- and I would love to tell everybody with breaking news. But, you know, it's really cool to see Aaron at 42. To see a young man at 22 and all of what he's been able to accomplish and where he's at in his personal life, and trying to make this decision. He's in a really good place."
Can’t take the journalist out of Kevin Harlan. Even as the emcee of his father’s celebration of life at Lambeau Field, he had to ask Mike McCarthy about a possible reunion with Aaron Rodgers in Pittsburgh: pic.twitter.com/kIKOShXgHf
— Rob Demovsky (@RobDemovsky) March 23, 2026
The head coach said during the offseason that his conversations with Rodgers had been "productive," and now, with Rodgers set to officially put pen-to-paper on a deal for the 2026 season, he and McCarthy will step onto an NFL field together as a duo once again.
This time, it's on the team they beat to hoist the Lombardi Trophy in February 2011.
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