Aaron Rodgers previously said he was ready to retire after last season — until the Pittsburgh Steelers hired his former Green Bay Packers head coach, Mike McCarthy.
With McCarthy now leading the charge in Pittsburgh, his hometown, the hype is real surrounding what will likely be Rodgers’ final ride in 2026.
Last season with the Steelers, Rodgers completed 65.7% of his passes for 3,322 yards, 24 touchdowns, and just seven interceptions across 16 games. He’s clearly still got it, even as he prepares to turn 43 in December.
An aging quarterback like that — let alone one who tore his Achilles just a few years ago — is typically the type of player you’d expect to sit out most of the preseason. The games don’t matter, and it’s valuable time for proven veterans to rest before the real games begin. But McCarthy has different plans for Rodgers.
Speaking with Mike Silver of The Athletic, Rodgers said McCarthy has asked him to play in the Steelers’ first two preseason games, against the Packers (Aug. 13) and New York Jets (Aug. 21) — both of his former teams.
“He wants me out there for 30 or 40 plays,” Rodgers told Silver. “I said, ‘Mike, if you want me to play, I’ll play.’ I’m not saying I want to do it. But if he wants me to, I will.”
McCarthy addressed the situation himself on Monday. “Those decisions are really gonna be made once we get up to it,” he said. “Trust me, I have a lot of ideas … We have plans, but being a healthy system, let’s see what happens. A lot can happen between now and then. He’d like to play. I would like to see him play. But we won’t make a decision until we get all the way up to it, because there’s more that goes into that than having one player play. It’s the culmination of players.”
Rodgers was drafted by Green Bay in 2005 and spent the first 18 years of his NFL career there, the majority of it with McCarthy as head coach. He then spent two seasons with the Jets, appearing in just 18 games. Now, in a full-circle moment, he’ll get to face his two former teams in preseason action, with both games set to take place in Pittsburgh.
The Steelers still have Rodgers playing winning football, and now they’ve brought in the coach he won a Super Bowl with in 2011. Add in the additions of Michael Pittman Jr. and Rico Dowdle, another year with DK Metcalf, and playmakers across the defense — including T.J. Watt, Cameron Heyward, and Jalen Ramsey — and it’s easy to see why there’s so much excitement in Pittsburgh, even in the post-Mike Tomlin era.