It’s been far too long since the Pittsburgh Steelers won a playoff game, their drought dating back to the 2016 season. One of the reasons the team is in quarterback limbo and waiting on a decision from Aaron Rodgers is because it couldn’t win one with Russell Wilson last season, but former NFL cornerback and current analyst Jason McCourty thinks that if Rodgers winds up in Pittsburgh, the Steelers can win in January.
“A very similar team to this past year, but I think the additions of a guy like Darius Slay, a guy that’s a Super Bowl winner that’s competed at a high-level. A guy like DK Metcalf, I see them winning a playoff game with a guy like Aaron Rodgers,” McCourty said Wednesday on ESPN’s Unsportmanlike. “You look at Rodgers’ numbers last year, and while obviously it was a down year for him, it was still better than a Russell Wilson and Justin Fields-led team and what the Pittsburgh Steelers have had over the last few years since Big Ben [Roethlisberger] left and at the very end of his career. So I do think Rodgers on that team makes them a team that’s playing in the divisional round of the NFL playoffs.”
The Steelers seemingly agree. They’re content waiting for him to make up his mind, even though it could be awhile before he signs. That means the Steelers are essentially Rodgers or bust when it comes to the remaining free agent quarterbacks, and the team would likely go into 2025 starting Mason Rudolph if Rodgers doesn’t sign with Pittsburgh.
The concern with Rodgers is that his mobility is lacking at this point in his career, but he still gets the ball out quick, which helps mitigate that a little bit. His 2.69 second-time-to-throw speed was tied for the sixth-fastest mark in the league last season, and he’s still a very good processor with a solid deep ball. After all, he’s still a four-time MVP, and while his game has gone downhill a bit and he wasn’t the same player in New York, he still had some impressive moments.
The Steelers are banking on him to win more than he did last season and ideally work with DK Metcalf and George Pickens to elevate their passing attack and win in the postseason. With no franchise quarterback on the roster, the Steelers focus for 2025 has to be finding their bridge quarterback and trying to win in the postseason, and it’s clear at this point that they feel Rodgers gives them the best chance to do so.
An argument could be made that Pittsburgh’s best course of action would be to struggle in 2025 and try to get a chance to draft their quarterback of the future next offseason, but the Steelers are never going to go into a season with the intent of losing, and they’ve made win-now moves with the trade for DK Metcalf and signing Darius Slay.
For the Steelers sake, they’ll be hoping McCourty is right and Aaron Rodgers still has enough left in the tank to lead the Steelers to a playoff win for the first time in nearly a decade.
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