Aaron Rodgers will face Jets in Week 1 after signing with Steelers
New York Jets quarterback Aaron Rodgers (8) reacts after a touchdown pass during an NFL football game against the Miami Dolphins Sunday, Jan. 5, 2025, in East Rutherford, N.J. Credit: AP/Adam Hunger
Aaron Rodgers will be the Jets’ problem for at least one more day.
That’ll be on Sept. 7, when they face the future Hall of Famer with his new team, the Steelers, in the regular-season opener at MetLife Stadium.
At least then all they’ll have to worry about is him as a quarterback and how they will defend his passes. For two long years, they had to be on guard for so many other elements of Rodgers’ unique existence as a member of their team.
Rodgers the podcast guest, Rodgers the social lightning rod, Rodgers the headline-maker, Rodgers the hypocritical preacher of not becoming a distraction . . . all of those versions of the guy are someone else’s problem now.
Good luck, Pittsburgh!
Certainly, the Steelers know what they are in for. Not only did they watch from afar as Rodgers’ mercurial melodramas razed the (already teetering) structure of the entire Jets organization like dynamite to an aging Vegas casino, leaving careers and reputations in rubble, but they’ve lived in his world for the past few months.
Rodgers has been able to talk with and sign with teams since March, when the Jets officially made him a free agent, and the Steelers have always been a possibility for him.
One by one, his other options dried up — the Giants, the Vikings, the Saints — and still he would not commit to becoming Pittsburgh’s newest would-be savior until Thursday, when he reportedly agreed to terms. He is expected to sign his contract on Friday and have some level of attendance, if not participation, in the team’s minicamp next week.
Perhaps he had fair reasons for dragging his feet in the process, as he suggested without providing details during an appearance on “The Pat McAfee Show” in April. The point is that, for the past three months, the Steelers have been in quarterback limbo, their entire offseason program now mooted by his uncertainty. Yet another franchise has become overshadowed and controlled by the whim of one player.
It shouldn’t take long for Rodgers’ ego to divert even that famed confluence of the Ohio, Allegheny and Monongahela rivers.
The Jets, meanwhile, seem to be flowing merrily along in their post-Rodgers era. That Week 1 game will be a fascinating reveal as to whether or not they have come out of it as cleanly as it feels at this point.
If all goes according to plan, the Jets will have Justin Fields as their starting quarterback that day. It will be the first time two opposing quarterbacks in an opening day game were the Week 1 starters for the other teams the previous year.
“There’s things about that player I think every coach wants players to have,” Aaron Glenn said of Fields earlier this week. “He has this quiet confidence about himself. He leads by the way that he wants to lead . . . He can galvanize a group of men. Obviously, he’s a talented player and I’m happy that I have him as my quarterback, I really am, because I think the sky’s the limit for this player.”
Glenn added: “I’m not going to go out there and say that he’s the next Joe Namath or anything like that, but I will tell you what, he’s going to be a good player for us, and I’m excited with what he’s going to do for us this season.”
Interesting, given that the last guy the Jets brought in at quarterback was all about being the next Joe Namath. At least in terms of team lore; he’d already had a better career than Broadway Joe with Green Bay.
Then he tore his Achilles in the 2023 opener and scuffled through nagging injuries for much of 2024 and was given the boot by the new front office and coaching staff this winter.
Fields doesn’t have to be Joe Namath. It’s probably enough that he’s not Aaron Rodgers.
There are a few other interesting nuggets that emerge from the pairing of Rodgers with the Steelers.
Not only does it set up a grudge game for him with the Jets in Week 1, but in Week 2, he faces the Vikings, a team that decided it would rather ride with J.J. McCarthy than flirt with Rodgers.
And of course there is the Oct. 26 game against the Packers. Unlike the Jets-Steelers game with its 1 p.m. kickoff that the league and its networks undoubtedly regret right about now, that game against Green Bay — even though it will be played in Pittsburgh and not at Lambeau Field — already was slated for a Sunday night showcase.
Rodgers also will become the second Super Bowl-winning quarterback to be coached by the man he beat in that game, in this case Mike Tomlin. The only other was Phil Simms, who played for the Giants under Dan Reeves, whom he topped when Reeves coached the Broncos.
Of more interest, though, is whether Rodgers can join the growing list of former Jets quarterbacks who have gone elsewhere to find greater success. Geno Smith, Sam Darnold and Joe Flacco have reached the playoffs since leaving the Jets, who have not had a postseason game since the 2010 season.
Maybe Rodgers will be able to accomplish that with the Steelers. Despite quarterback chaos since Ben Roethlisberger retired, they have made the postseason in four of the last five seasons and have never had a losing record under Tomlin.
Even if Rodgers does do that, and even if the Jets’ season disappoints yet again, the Jets are a far healthier, saner, more stable organization without Rodgers roaming their hallways.
When they released him — unceremoniously, according to Rodgers’ bitter account — general manager Darren Mougey said it was in “the best interest of the team.” He may never speak truer words on the job than those.
Let the Steelers give it a try. The Jets just need to focus on trying to beat Rodgers three months from now.
After all the Rodgers-induced stresses they endured in the previous two years, that’ll probably be the easiest issue they’ve had to face regarding the guy.
Tom Rock began covering sports for Newsday in 1996 and became its NFL columnist in 2022. He previously was Newsday's Giants beat writer beginning in 2008.
