Rodgers Signing Defies Steelers Reputation but Further Boosts Team’s Profile

Aaron Rodgers is now officially a Steeler, bringing in a significant amount of risk for a notoriously risk-averse organization. 

After months of speculation, even confounding Steelers coach Mike Tomlin, Rodgers at last notified the team Thursday that he would sign, and then officially agreed to a one-year deal on Friday, pending a physical. 

In pure football terms, Rodgers and a pedigree built with four Most Valuable Player awards could represent a sizable upgrade for a franchise stuck in a competitive morass. Under Tomlin, the Steelers have not had a losing season since 2003, four years before Tomlin arrived, a remarkable streak in the hypercompetitive NFL. For all that regular-season success, though, the team also hasn’t won a playoff game since the 2016 season, five years before the retirement of franchise icon Ben Roethlisberger. 

In a broader sense, though, the arrival of the highly polarizing Rodgers also brings a different type of attention to a Steelers organization that, under the Rooney family ownership, has long prized stability, accountability, and minimizing off-field drama. Even before the deal was struck, Steelers legend Terry Bradshaw called the team’s pursuit of Rodgers “a joke.” Since then, New York–area media such as the New York Post openly lampooned the signing and called Rodgers “Pittsburgh’s problem now.”

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One thing is for certain, though, with Rodgers signing with Pittsburgh: The Steelers will be an even more prominent fixture on television this season than the perennially popular team already is. Pittsburgh’s 2025 schedule currently includes four primetime games, including an Oct. 26 clash on NBC’s Sunday Night Football against the Packers, where Rodgers had the vast amount of his prior on-field success. 

The Steelers, meanwhile, also begin the regular season at the Jets, Rodgers’s most recent team, and that game is certain to be a key element of the early 1 p.m. ET window on the league’s first Sunday. TickPick also said that an average ticket purchase price of $326 for that opener represented the most expensive Jets regular-season game that the company has tracked. 

Other key late-season Steelers games, such as late-afternoon matchups against the Bills and Lions that will be shown nationally by CBS and a Sept. 28 game in Dublin against the Vikings on the NFL Network, have gained further prominence with the arrival of Rodgers. Other Steelers games later in the season currently slated for afternoon windows could additionally get flexed into broader windows. 

NFL officials previously said they were keeping factors such as Rodgers in mind when developing the 2025 schedule, but ultimately released it last month on the normal timetable with the quarterback still unsigned.