The Pittsburgh Steelers and Aaron Rodgers were on the same page this whole time. And maybe that’s best illustrated by the lengths to which they staged his low-profile entrance into the team’s facility, for the future Hall of Famer’s first visit there, on March 21.
Earlier this offseason, the Steelers were redoing the practice fields behind their headquarters. During the day, they routinely left a gate open so the trucks carrying sod could easily get in and out as the work continued. Ahead of his Friday morning arrival, to avoid anyone who might’ve gotten wind of the visit, or having any random Rodgers sightings, the Steelers told Rodgers to come in through that gate and pull up through a back entrance.
What they didn’t know was that he’d take the incognito act to another level. Rather than arriving by car service—in a black Tahoe or Escalade—he drove himself over from the airport in the kind of white Chevy Malibu you’d see a hundred of in any Hertz rental lot.
A week later, the Steelers’ brass left for the owners meetings in Florida with everything short of a signed contract, carrying a very high level of confidence that Rodgers was coming.
There’s been a lot of hand-wringing over the past three months over whether Rodgers would leave the Steelers at the altar. Over whether Rodgers’s entitlement was showing in his decision not to sign in March, April or May. Over how such a proud franchise was putting its quarterback situation in such a tenuous place, where it’d be Rodgers … or else?
The reality was simpler. The above was just one example of the level of trust that the Steelers and Rodgers were able to establish. Rodgers had his personal matters to tend to. The Steelers were willing to wait, knowing what the payoff would be. Neither side was moved much by all the speculation, hysteria and projection that resulted from the situation twisting in the wind, seemingly unresolved, for three months.
Want some reality?
• Rodgers’s name first arose as the Steelers went through initial end-of-season evaluations. Pittsburgh was moving on from Russell Wilson. The Steelers did want to keep working with Justin Fields, but knew if another team was willing to make him the guy, they’d have a hard time keeping him. So they discussed Rodgers, Matthew Stafford, Kirk Cousins and Daniel Jones as options.
• Their study of Rodgers showed a little more than even they expected. Early in the 2024 season, the Achilles, and a hamstring injury to follow, clearly hampered him. But as time wore on, even with the Jets struggling, the Steelers saw Rodgers returning to form. In the Jets’ Halloween game against the Texans, he made a few big-time back-shoulder throws. He played well in both Dolphins games. In Week 16 against the Jaguars, Pittsburgh saw vintage Rodgers, with a late go-ahead touchdown throw to Davante Adams really standing out.
• The Steelers touched base with the Rams on Stafford, but never believed Stafford would sign off on leaving Los Angeles. They did the same with the Falcons on Cousins. Meanwhile, they stayed in touch with Fields’s camp, as the Jets came with an offer of $20 million per year and the promise of being their undisputed starter. By then, the Steelers were in discussions with Rodgers, who’d also drawn interest from the Giants.
• The visit was set up more to get everyone to know each other—trust was important for Rodgers, and meeting face-to-face was an effort to try to establish that—though Rodgers did spend time talking football with Mike Tomlin and OC Arthur Smith. The Steelers did figure out that Rodgers had some strong relationships in the Jets’ building (co-owner Christopher Johnson, president Hymie Elhai, coach Robert Saleh), which showed that the idea that everything was messy for him in New York was overblown.
• From there, the sides resolved to stay in touch. There weren’t regularly scheduled check-ins, but Rodgers would call Tomlin and Smith every now and again, which colors why the Steelers were never really concerned that Rodgers would back out on them.
• Meanwhile, as the offseason program marched on, Tomlin was disciplined in outwardly keeping the focus on the players in the building, and working with Mason Rudolph and, after the draft, Will Howard in the quarterback room. But in the background, Smith and the offensive coaches were doing a deep dive into Rodgers’s past, the same way they did last year with Wilson and Fields, to start to build out the bones of an offense that would highlight Rodgers’s strengths.
• One thing that helped was Smith’s relationships with two of Rodgers’s three most recent play-callers—Matt LaFleur in Green Bay and Todd Downing in New York. Both were Titans staffmates of Smith’s, and their assessments of Rodgers as a football-brilliant quarterback matched up. So, too, did flexibility in Smith’s scheme to fit to whoever the quarterback is, with Smith having called plays for Marcus Mariota, Ryan Tannehill, Matt Ryan, Desmond Ridder, and, last year, Wilson and Fields.
• From there, the offensive coaches would dig out what would work best for Rodgers, while knowing they could dig into some elements from Smith’s time in Atlanta to empower the quarterback to do more at the line, to leverage the aforementioned football IQ of their QB-to-be. A lot of that stuff was on the table last year for Fields and Wilson already, so there’s a foundation there for the whole offensive group to build on as they take it to another level.
• The Steelers officially got word early last week that Rodgers was coming in to sign his contract at the end of the week, and kept it quiet as the rest of the players worked through three days of OTAs. The parameters of the deal were actually agreed to in mid-March, and all that was left for GM Omar Khan and David Dunn to work through were some structural elements and back-end details.
• The one-year contract is for $13.85 million, with $10 million guaranteed, and another $5.85 million in incentives. Rodgers arrived Saturday morning to sign it, and from there he and Smith immediately dove in on the playbook, things that the Steelers already built in anticipation of his signing and some historical elements of Smith’s scheme and how it matched up with some of Rodgers’s experiences.
That so much of this stayed quiet is, in fact, a testament to the trust that the Steelers and Rodgers built over a short time. And now, on Tuesday, it’ll be unveiled for everyone to see. The team told the quarterback he’d get a hungry group that’ll work its tail off for him and follow him, and he’ll finally get to see it firsthand, and vice versa. It’ll happen, too, with expectations, and the spotlight ratcheted up as Pittsburgh gives T.J. Watt, Minkah Fitzpatrick, Cam Heyward and the rest of its core the best shot at chasing a Lombardi Trophy.
In the end, it’s pretty clear that this is a swing for nothing less than the fences.
It'll be fun to see whether Khan, Tomlin & Co. connect on this one.
This article was originally published on www.si.com as How Aaron Rodgers and the Steelers Built Trust and Signed a Deal.