PITTSBURGH (AP) — Aaron Rodgers and Mike Tomlin share a competitive stubbornness. An inherent arrogance, too.
While that hardly makes them outliers in the alpha-driven NFL, their ability to keep the realities of the game they have helped define at bay for so long does.
Coaches aren't supposed to go nearly two decades without experiencing a losing season. Tomlin has.
Quarterbacks aren't supposed to recover from an Achilles injury in their 40s and return to throw for nearly 4,000 yards. Rodgers did.
Maybe they have long sensed this shared “otherness." Maybe that's why they've made it a point during their occasional professional meetings to make GIF-worthy eye contact, a non-verbal way of saying “game recognize game.”
So perhaps it's fitting that two men who believe the rules don't necessarily apply to them will share the sideline this fall in a season that could serve as a symbolic last stand for their worldview.
Rodgers is eager to move past two weird years in New York, where he generated more headlines than victories.
Tomlin has kept churning out winning seasons, potentially at the expense of finding the franchise quarterback the teams the Steelers have been so frantically, if futilely, chasing for years have in abundance.
Yet rather than keep Russell Wilson or Justin Fields — both of whom Pittsburgh let walk in free agency after leading the Steelers to a 10-7 mark last fall — or roll the dice with Mason Rudolph or use a first-round pick in April's draft on the most important position in the game, by signing Rodgers the Steelers are doing what they have always done for the last 50-plus years.
They're trying to win. Now. There is nobility in that, to be sure. Glory, however, is another thing entirely.
And while Rudolph made himself a quasi-folk hero after coming off the bench down the stretch in 2023 to lead Pittsburgh to the playoffs, there's little doubt that Rodgers is the best option available, even if watching the Steelers spending two-plus months hat-in-hand waiting for him to commit caused franchise icon and Hall of Famer Terry Bradshaw to call his old team's pursuit of the four-time MVP “a joke.”
Yet losing is no laughing matter to a coach who counts “our business is winning” among his many Tomlin-isms.
Riding with Rudolph or (eventually) rookie sixth-round pick Will Howard would have come with a high risk/reward. Either they would have been successful and the Steelers would have found “their guy" or they would stumble and the club would land inside the top 12 in the draft without having to trade to get there for the first time since taking Ben Roethlisberger 11th overall in 2004.
Gambling, however, is not Tomlin's way.
For all of his inherent swagger, Tomlin's approach remains cautious. In a league where scoring is paramount, Tomlin remains fixated on winning the turnover battle and avoiding mistakes, hoping in the end his team will be on the right side of a 20-17 game.
A little more often than not, it does. Until the playoffs come around anyway. Then the Steelers often find themselves going against a team with a better quarterback, at least on that given day, than the one they employ, the defense struggles, and all the talk of a run to a seventh Super Bowl title quickly vanishes.
Enter Rodgers, who is hoping to put a more positive coda on the end of his career than what would have been tacked on had he decided to step away after a miserable 5-12 slog with the Jets last season.
Rodgers stressed during his methodical decision-making process that he wouldn't commit to any team until he was sure he could fully invest.
Apparently, Rodgers reached that point Thursday, conveniently a few hours after his soon-to-be teammates wrapped up two weeks of voluntary organized team activities. He will likely pass the physical that will ratify his one-year deal in time to trot out onto the practice field at the Steelers’ facility for the start of mandatory minicamp next, where the angst over his future will morph into angst over how much life remains in his 41-year-old legs.
Rodgers turns 42 in December. The list of quarterbacks who have won a playoff game at 42 or older starts and stops with Tom Brady.
For Rodgers to join that list, he'll have to stay healthy behind a young offensive line that struggled at times to protect Wilson and Fields, develop chemistry with a wide receiver group that is largely unproven outside recently acquired two-time Pro Bowler DK Metcalf and try to make sure the volume on the noise that accompanies him wherever the frequent “Pat McAfee Show” guest and avid conspiracy theorist goes doesn't drown out the team-first tone Tomlin is trying to set.
It's a lot to ask, though Rodgers will likely come in motivated, well aware that a portion (albeit a small one) of his legacy is at stake.
The pressure Tomlin faces will be different. Conventional wisdom suggests it's finally time for the Steelers to get off the treadmill of “pretty good but hardly great” by taking an overdue step back.
Conventional wisdom, however, didn't have a defense with an ageless All-Pro defensive tackle, a future Hall of Fame outside linebacker on the back side of his prime and a perennial Pro Bowl safety.
The Steelers do.
Tomlin feels he owes it to Cam Heyward, T.J. Watt and Minkah Fitzpatrick to maximize 2025, even if it potentially leaves them in a familiar position next April when the draft comes to Pittsburgh: with a first-round pick in the low-20s and no quarterback of the future on the roster.
If it happens, so be it. Tomlin has no plans to ever apologize for the way he goes about his job.
Five months ago, not long after another quick playoff exit, this time at the hands of Baltimore, he shrugged when asked if the Steelers were “stuck.”
"Stuck is kind of a helpless feeling,” the NFL's longest-tenured coach said with a touch of disdain. “And I don’t know that I feel helpless.”
Helpless? No. Yet rather than call a tow truck, the Steelers are revving the engine in the hopes their tires don't spin in vain, but find a little grip amid all that mud.
The lines between competitive stubbornness and plain old stubbornness, arrogance and ignorance, are pretty thin.
Tomlin, Rodgers, and the Steelers seem intent on getting an up-close look at both.
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FILE - New York Jets quarterback Aaron Rodgers runs onto the field before an NFL football game against the Miami Dolphins, Sunday, Jan. 5, 2025, in East Rutherford, N.J. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig, File)
Pittsburgh Steelers head coach Mike Tomlin yells encouragement during NFL football practice in Pittsburgh, Tuesday, May 27, 2025. (AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar)
