Aaron Rodgers is 42 years old. He just signed up to play another year of NFL football. He was on the practice field at Steelers OTAs taking first-team reps Tuesday like he had been there all along.
The four-time MVP agreed to a one-year deal with the Pittsburgh Steelers worth up to $25 million. The base is around $22 million guaranteed, with up to $3 million in incentives that get him to the full number. He signed two days before OTAs started, then showed up at the team facility ready to work.
This is Rodgers’ second tour with the Steelers and his 22nd NFL season overall. The first year in Pittsburgh ended in a divisional-round playoff loss after the Steelers underwhelmed in a regular season that started fast and ended bumpy. The team and Rodgers agreed there was unfinished business. So they ran it back.
The most interesting part of this Steelers offseason is the reunion in the building. Pittsburgh hired Mike McCarthy as offensive coordinator earlier this year. McCarthy was Rodgers’ head coach in Green Bay for 13 seasons, including the 2010 season that ended in a Super Bowl ring. The two men know each other as well as any coach-quarterback pairing in football. Now they are back in the same building, this time with McCarthy running the offense and Rodgers throwing the passes.
The McCarthy hire was the move that convinced Rodgers to come back. He had options. He has had options for years. He is also at the age where every offseason is a real question. McCarthy returning, plus the chance to play another year with the receiving corps Pittsburgh has assembled, was enough to get him to sign.
Rodgers took first-team reps Tuesday ahead of Will Howard (the team’s QB2), Mason Rudolph (the QB3), and Drew Allar (the QB4). That is a deep room. Howard and Allar represent the future of the position. Rudolph is the experienced veteran insurance policy. Rodgers is the guy expected to start every week he is healthy.
The big question is whether the Steelers can actually win with a 42-year-old quarterback. The honest answer is that they probably can. The offense is built around the running game, the offensive line is one of the best in football, and the defense is championship-caliber. Rodgers does not need to play like 2011 Aaron Rodgers. He just needs to be efficient, take care of the ball, and let the rest of the roster do its work.
Critics will say Pittsburgh is wasting another year of an elite defense by not finding a long-term quarterback answer. That is a fair point. But the franchise has decided that competing for a Super Bowl in 2026 is more valuable than starting another quarterback search. Given how rare elite defenses are, the math is defensible.
The Howard angle is the one to watch. He is a second-year player who came in with high expectations and a chance to take the job at some point. With Rodgers locked in as the starter, Howard becomes the apprentice quarterback for one of the best to ever do it. He gets to watch how Rodgers prepares, reads coverage, and manages a game without any pressure to play immediately. That is a setup most second-year quarterbacks would kill for.
For Rodgers, this is probably the last lap. Even he has acknowledged that the body is not what it was. The shoulder, the calf, the various nagging injuries that come with playing this long all add up. But he is also a quarterback who has openly enjoyed the chance to play with McCarthy again. That kind of joy in the work matters at his age.
The Steelers open OTAs through June. Training camp starts in late July. Week 1 is in early September. If Rodgers stays healthy, this team is going to be a problem in the AFC.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.
