The time has finally come, Steelers fans.
Way back when rumors first began to swirl about Aaron Rodgers potentially becoming Pittsburgh’s quarterback in 2025, Read & React promised you readers we wouldn’t dive into the constant will-he-won’t-he portion of the NFL news cycle. We swore that we would only discuss Rodgers if he actually signed, and that those conversations would mostly be limited to actual football.
Well, here we are.
Rodgers signed with the Steelers last week, and Read & React is responding the only way we know how: a comprehensive dive into the film and stats* that matter. Let’s not waste any time; we’ve got a lot to cover.
* Unless otherwise noted, all stats for this article are pulled from NFL Next Gen Stats.
After watching some of Aaron Rodgers’ 2024, what can we expect in 2025 with the Steelers?
Photo by Justin K. Aller/Getty Images
RB: Ryan and I usually divvy up the analysis in these types of articles, and while that’s the case once again here, quarterback play is a bit too holistic to cut right down the middle. As a result, we’ll be looking at a couple of questions in a conversational way to hopefully paint a full picture of what Aaron Rodgers brings to the Steelers — there might be some overlap and some disagreement, but that’s why you read this column, right?
To start off, I bet most Steelers fans have asked one or both of these questions about Rodgers at some point this spring:
Just how “washed up” is the 41-year-old quarterback?
In what ways is Rodgers different from Justin Fields and Russell Wilson? (Namely Wilson).
Let’s start with the first. Aaron Rodgers is definitely showing some age after two decades in the NFL, but there needs to be some nuance in that statement.
For one, you’d be forgiven for thinking Rodgers’ arm is no longer great given his age — and while I won’t go as far as to say he hasn’t regressed in that area, he can still absolutely sling it. His release remains that signature lightning-quick flick of the wrist. The velocity is still well above average. And he can still toss a football deep — here against the Cardinals you can see him send a pass around 50 air yards while running and not being able to step into the throw.
Aaron Rodgers is one of the best arm talents in the history of the game, and even entering his 21st season, you can still see some of that magic. Every now and then, he’ll break out a vintage Rodgers effortless, perfectly-placed throw that reminds you why he’s been in the league for so long.
However, it’s not all good. Accuracy is where you see the most regression in Rodgers’ game, and I think he feels it too. While there are some misses all over the field in the games I watched from his 2024, downfield is where he struggled the most. He’s still not an inaccurate thrower by any means, but the bar is set absurdly high — this is Aaron Rodgers we’re talking about! These days, he looks a bit more mortal; not every deep toss drops in a bucket.
There are a few more ugly misses than I thought there’d be, too.
RP: Agreed, and some of them came while Rodgers was kept fairly clean on a play. Rodgers’ performance in 2024 was reminiscent to me of the late-era days of Ben Roethlisberger. When you’ve played as long as those two have, the hits start to accumulate. As you age, those hits become harder to evade and bounce back from. Rodgers, at times, played like someone hearing footsteps over their shoulder.
RB: Far be it from us, the part-time football bloggers, to tell Rodgers how to throw a football. But I think his nonchalant release, while still good, hasn’t aged as gracefully as other parts of his game. Sometimes, that static footwork that he excelled with in his prime just doesn’t result in the ball placement it used to.
RP: That isn’t to say Rodgers isn’t capable of moments of brilliance. And the lack of chemistry he had with his pass catchers in New York really can’t be undersold. While Rodgers had some bad misses of his own, there were plenty of times reviewing his 2024 season where you just wish one of his teammates could make the tough play they needed.
Take the above throw, for example. I don’t think I’d advise this pass to most quarterbacks, but for Rodgers, it nearly works. The absolute stones it took to make that throw, with anticipation, into a bracketed seam route from his tight end — and to thread that needle perfectly? Rodgers. Nails.
Or how about this next throw? Rodgers throws it to Garrett Wilson’s back shoulder, placed where only the receiver could have a play on the ball. Wilson, however, is unable to stop backpedaling on his adjustment and steps out of bounds before securing the catch. It was an incompletion, but I would argue the placement from Rodgers was still top-notch.
So while I don’t think it’s wrong to say Rodgers' accuracy can wane in certain situations — more on that later — I do still think he’s capable of completing some high-difficulty throws under the right conditions.
RB: Exactly. He can still absolutely drive throws into tight windows. Again, the arm strength isn’t the issue — his accuracy just isn't as consistently elite anymore.
You can see some hesitation in Rodgers’ game these days, too. He simply doesn’t push the ball downfield much, to the point where there are several missed downfield reads dotting his 2024 tape.
A few missed downfield opportunities – Lazard on the curl-and-go in the first clip; Wilson in the middle of the field in the second pic.twitter.com/gAjwXSqQtV
— Ryland Bickley (@_Ryland_B) June 11, 2025
RP: I came away with a similar impression. I don’t want to dogpile on Rodgers, but I do have a play that I think perfectly represents that hesitation Ryland is alluding to.
In the play above, the Jets really aren’t giving Rodgers a ton of options to read. I chose this one because the simplicity of the concept makes it easier for us to see and understand, and highlights the occasional moments of hesitation Ryland points out.
The Jets have their wide receiver at the bottom of the screen running a vertical clear-out route to freeze the safety and keep him away from Garrett Wilson (top of the screen), who is running a corner route. The TE is asked to block and then goes on a delayed release, but he’s a last resort on the play. Rodgers appears to see Wilson with room for days, but he doesn’t let the pass go. Instead, he holds it a moment too long as the pressure triangulates around him. He awkwardly shifts to his right in an attempt to avoid it, but makes it worse, and eventually gets off an improvised toss to the releasing tight end that falls incomplete.
Looking at the screenshot below, you can see there was plenty of space for Rodgers to lead his receiver into for a big gain if he uncorks this. We’ve seen Rodgers layer a throw like this a million times before. But for whatever reason — be it doubts about his own arm or vision, or a lack of trust in his timing with Wilson — Rodgers doesn’t take it. One play doesn’t spell out the end of Rodgers’ effectiveness by any means, but there are more plays on his tape like this than you’d expect.
RB: Our overview should also address Rodgers’ athleticism — how is he in the pocket in his 40s? The answer to this one both surprised and disappointed.
While he’s never been a high-end runner as a quarterback, and certainly didn’t look like one in 2024, Rodgers has a bit more mobility than I expected. He navigates the pocket well to extend plays, and while he was chased down a fair bit by defensive linemen, he still looks fairly light on his feet considering his age. For a 41-year-old pocket passer, “not a statue” is a perfectly fine place to be.
However, Rodgers’ awareness at the line of scrimmage wasn’t always as elite as you’d hope given his experience. He took a lot of sacks in key moments last year, and sometimes looked sluggish to react in the pocket.
His ability to make clutch plays late under pressure just wasn’t always there. Some of it you could chalk up to age — as Ryan mentioned, maybe Rodgers isn’t as keen on hanging in the pocket at taking big hits as he was 20 years ago.
Of course, it’s worth noting that Rodgers had abysmal line play in front of him last season, which forgives a number of his flaws in 2024.
RP: One way the Steelers can try to mitigate some of these issues is through play action. This will, of course, require the Steelers to become more efficient in the running game. The Steelers ran at a high volume in 2024, but they were one of the league's least efficient teams. Teams learned they could creep defenders closer to the box as long as their defensive backs could hold up against vertical routes in the boundary. This eventually shrunk the areas of the field where the Steelers could be effective.
To the Steelers’ credit, they seem intent on getting better in that area. After drafting Kaleb Johnson, a player who had a knack for creating explosive gains in college, the hope is that their young offensive line can gel and perform better in 2025. And while Rodgers doesn’t move like he used to, like Ryland points out, he was still able to move well enough in designed rollouts that the Steelers could try to use that to move the pocket for Rodgers and get him some easier throws.
Play action also happens to be a staple of Arthur Smith’s scheme. However, the Steelers 2025 offense won’t just be Smith’s scheme. The Steelers will need to make their offense compatible with Rodgers, which means incorporating elements of the “Rodgers offense” to make things as smooth as possible for his new quarterback.
The good news is that play action should be fairly compatible with Rodgers. He ran 147 plays using play action in 2024. The bad news? The results weren’t all that great for the Jets.
Any marrying of Arthur Smith's scheme with the “Rodgers Offense” will need to include play action.
In 2024 Rodgers attempted the 7th most PA passes, and was T-11th for TDs.
But he was not efficient by most metrics: Rating (32nd), EPA (23rd), CPOE (34th), Comp% (28th)
— Ryan Parish (@RyanParishmedia) June 11, 2025
If you just look at traditional box score stats, Rodgers’ season doesn’t look all that bad. He finished the season with six passing touchdowns coming off of play action, which was good for 11th most in the league. Each of those came in the red zone, with the furthest one coming from 13 yards out. He also protected the ball well, only throwing one interception off of play action. And while his 851 passing yards off play action don’t wow you, it was good enough for 15th in the league, a respectable figure.
However, watch enough tape, and pop the hood on some advanced statistics to confirm what you’re seeing, and Rodgers' inefficiency last season starts to come to light.
Rodgers faced the sixth-lowest amount of pressure (23.8%) on play action last year, yet was highly inaccurate and inefficient compared to his peers and to his own high standards.
Aaron Rodgers on Play Action
Stat
2020
2021
2024
Stat
2020
2021
2024
Attempts
153
136
147
Completion %
73.90%
69.90%
63.30%
Yards
1,230
1,027
851
Touchdowns
20
9
6
Interceptions
0
0
1
QB Rating
136.7
113.8
89.7
Yards Per Attempt
8
7.6
5.8
EPA
+64.8
+33.8
+3.1
CPOE
+4.5%
+1.9%
-6.7%
Looking at Rodgers on play action in his most recent MVP years vs. 2024
Stats provided by NFL NextGen Stats
Breaking things down even further, Rodgers was okay when it came to taking deep shots off play-action in 2024, but he didn’t thrive in it. He attempted just eight such passes of 20+ yards downfield all season, completing only three of them. How much of this was to blame on the natural decline of age and how much was due to poor chemistry with his receivers is debatable from these clips. There are examples of underthrows and overthrows alike.
For a team that is hoping to run the ball as much as PIT is, they'll need to take shots downfield to keep the defense honest. Rodgers had 8 attempts of 20+ yards off play action. Here are all of them pic.twitter.com/KV7CkGBLx1
— Ryan Parish (@RyanParishmedia) June 11, 2025
Rodgers didn’t fare well in the intermediate part of the field (10-19 yards downfield) either, regardless of play-action or not. Across the board for Rodgers, these types of throws were not his bread and butter in 2024.
Despite throwing the 10th-most of these intermediate passes, Rodgers finished 32nd in touchdowns (two), 17th in yards (872), 35th in CPOE (-12.5%), and dead last among 36 qualified passers in completion percentage (39.7%), QB Rating (53.5), yards-per-attempt (7.2) and EPA (-5.9), despite facing the third-lowest rate of pressure (22.3%) on these types of throws.
If you’re looking for more information on what CPOE and EPA are, check out this explainer from our companion site. Long story short, what you need to know is Rodgers was not as accurate as he normally is, but he also wasn’t creating as many big, positive plays for his offense either.
Those stats are all pretty bleak, but they could potentially be explained away by Rodgers' clear lack of connection with anyone on the Jets besides Davante Adams. Add on the fact that Rodgers was a 40-year-old just returning from an Achilles tendon injury, and there’s a possibility that another year removed from injury could see him return to closer to his typical efficiency. Still, how much he can bounce back at his age remains to be seen.
There is some room for hope, albeit the kind that could just as easily turn to frustration if it doesn’t pan out. For a few seasons now, the Steelers have struggled to consistently stay ahead of the chains on early downs. Rodgers, at this stage of his career, is still smooth while operating the quick passing game. When paired with an effective rushing attack, that type of quick-hitting, take-what-the-defense-gives-you style of play could be effective
While Rodgers deep numbers off play action weren't what they've been in the past, he lived in the quick game off play action with NYJ.
Of his 147 play action attempts, 111 were 10-or-less air yards. The RBs, Muth, DK, Calvin, and Roman Wilson need to be ready to create some YAC pic.twitter.com/0jzlrpdAv6
— Ryan Parish (@RyanParishmedia) June 11, 2025
This style of offense is a grind. It asks an offense to be patient and consistent, both easier said than done. In a worst-case scenario, an offense could quickly implode if they are unable to string enough of these plays together successfully. Penalties and lost yardage, already potential drive killers, become even more costly. Essentially, the worst-case scenario is we see a version of offense similar to what we’ve seen from the Steelers for the past five years.
However, if the Steelers can improve enough in the run game to keep defenses off balance, and if some of Pittsburgh’s pass-catchers are able to create yards after the catch, it can alleviate some of the pressure off Rodgers and help the Steelers eat more of the clock. It’s a stressful way to live, with incredibly limited room for error, but it’s a choice the Steelers seem prepared to live with for another season.
RB: So, is Rodgers completely washed? I’d argue no. But he’s obviously not in his prime anymore and will need a good supporting cast to succeed in Pittsburgh. He doesn’t instantly elevate a bad offense at this point in his career. We saw that in New York.
That leads to the second question, in a way, that we’ll be looking at in this column. How does Rodgers differ from the quarterback play the Steelers had last year?
The stats that I found backed up the eye test and what Ryan already mentioned: Rodgers was running a vastly different offense in New York last year compared to what the Steelers were doing. Rodgers took 2.69 seconds to throw (fifth-fastest among qualified quarterbacks last year) while Russell Wilson was 24th at 2.86 seconds (Justin Fields took an even longer 3.04 seconds).
You can also look at deep ball percentage. Russell Wilson had the sixth-highest rate in the NFL at 13.1%, while Rodgers was 31st at 7.4%.
As we’ve mentioned already, if you want an easy reference for what the Jets’ offense looked like last year, think of late-stage Ben Roethlisberger in Pittsburgh — a LOT of five wide, 11 personnel, and an offense built on the quick passing game. Except in Rodgers’ case, even fewer shots downfield.
How much of that was on Rodgers? That’s a good question. He had a hand-picked offensive coordinator and group of receivers in New York, so he had some degree of control over the team’s offensive plans. But interestingly, in Rodgers’ last season with the Packers in 2022, his deep ball percentage was nearly double (14.2% — third in the NFL!) even if he still had a fast time to throw (2.7 seconds).
That’s to say, there might be more versatility in Rodgers’ game than we’re giving him credit for at this point in his career. How the Steelers can fit the aging Rodgers offense of 2024 into Arthur Smith’s vision for 2025 is a massive storyline this offseason.
But man, the Jets offense was rough in 2024. The frustration and lack of morale was brutally obvious. Watching that film probably took a year off my life.
The offensive line was another hard watch, with Rodgers being sacked 40 times last season (Wilson and Fields were sacked a combined 49 times, but they also took longer to throw). The run game also offered no support — the second-worst in the league, averaging 91.8 yards per game. Pittsburgh, for reference, averaged 127.4.
And for as much as Rodgers is a detail-oriented passer, the Jets offense, even when it could get a throw out in time, looked comedically discombobulated. There was a ridiculous number of drops in the games I watched, even from proven All-Pro Davante Adams.
Rodgers’ rhythm-based quick passing offense looked out of sync quite a bit, with plenty of near misses where Rodgers’ pass or the receiver wasn't where it needed to be; Rodgers likes to throw with anticipation early in the play.
When it works, it’s a thing of beauty — and it’s still a strength of his game — but there are a lot of variables that can go wrong. And in the Jets’ mess of a 2024, plenty did. Another big talking point: How much of the Jets’ dysfunction was really on Rodgers?
And despite how good he is as a processor, occasionally Rodgers would latch on to a pre-snap read that would blow up spectacularly in his face given how fast he had to get the ball out after the snap.
Rodgers can get locked onto pre-snap reads in the quick game. Gets fooled by the dropping DT in the first clip; misses a wide open Davante Adams in the second, instead throwing an easily-defended curl route pic.twitter.com/Ojabeqemy8
— Ryland Bickley (@_Ryland_B) June 11, 2025
So, while quarterback is the most important position on the field, and I do legitimately believe Rodgers is an upgrade over Russell Wilson and Justin Fields in 2025, we can’t forget that the Steelers’ offense still averaged 2.5 points per game more than the Jets did last season. A lot needs to go right around Rodgers for that upgrade to be meaningful.
Still, I think Rodgers’ arm talent and football savvy stand out as better than anything the Steelers have had in years, and if he can develop strong chemistry with his wide receivers, adding an efficient, quick passing game to a Steelers offense that often stagnated in 2024 will be quite the boost. That fast time to throw helps out the O-line, too.
RP: Ryland’s spot on in that the Steelers are in some ways going in a radically different direction with Rodgers, even if there are many similarities you can point to with how they’ve managed the post-Roethlisberger era.
The Steelers threw 499 passes as a team last year. Rodgers attempted 584, the second-most in the league. The Steelers tried to complement — and perhaps limit the damage caused by — their quarterbacks in 2024 by running the ball 533 times. Something is going to have to give next season. Ideally, the Steelers will be able to find a successful balance between to two. But if push comes to shove, who will win out? The Steelers' desire to run the ball or Rodgers' instinct to steer the ship himself?
Ryland, are there any specific preferences Rodgers has when running an offense we should know about?
RB: Rodgers loves to diagnose the defense pre-snap, find a window to exploit, and hit his receiver with the ball immediately — thus the number of empty sets and general lack of motion in New York’s 2024 offense.
On the receiver end of things, this is a role I think Calvin Austin III could be successful in next year given his ability to separate early with speed. There were a lot of quick windows where Austin was open last year and didn’t get the ball — those are throws Rodgers will make.
Rodgers also has a great seam ball still even if he doesn’t target the intermediate middle of the field a ton — this could be a big year for Pat Freiermuth as well.
Pittsburgh still lacks a true WR2 and D.K. Metcalf will be the focal point of the team’s passing game, but I think Rodgers could bring out more from some underused pieces in the Steelers’ offense. Again though, he had the trio of Adams, Garrett Wilson, and Allen Lazard in 2024 and didn’t do much, so don’t let expectations get too out of hand.
Rodgers could also provide a boost to Jaylen Warren and the rest of the Steelers’ running back room in the dump-off game. For better and worse, Rodgers checked down a lot last season (Breece Hall had 57 receptions), and the Steelers have a stable of capable pass-catchers in the backfield who should benefit from that.
And it’s worth repeating that Arthur Smith’s run game, even if it doesn’t fully click, should still be better than what Rodgers had in New York. That will further open up the passing game, and Rodgers still saw a lot of two-high safety looks in 2024 out of respect for his passing ability.
If Rodgers can regain some aggression pushing the ball downfield, and the Steelers’ high-pedigree offensive line can play at an acceptable level, there’s reason for cautious optimism in the Pittsburgh offense this upcoming season. Emphasis on cautious.
Give him a more complete offense (big if) in 2025, and this version of Rodgers — who’s definitely not the MVP-caliber player of the past — can still lead a team to the playoffs.
RP: Hell, if everything goes right, they might even win one when they get there. And if not, at least we’ve got an exciting 2026 class to look forward to.
Join in on Steelers R&R by sharing your takes on this week’s topics in the comments. What are your thoughts on Aaron Rodgers as a player? Feel free to pitch future questions in the comment section or on Twitter/X: tag @_Ryland_B or @RyanParishMedia, or email us at steelersreadnreact@gmail.com
