For the relatively cheap price of $13.65 million, Aaron Rodgers plays for the Pittsburgh Steelers. After contemplating retirement in lieu of being released by the New York Jets before NFL free agency, Rodgers will suit up for his third NFL team in his illustrious career. The 2025-26 NFL season will be Rodgers' age-42 season out of Cal. He now joins a team that made the AFC playoffs a season ago.
When looking at the specifics of Rodgers' one-year, $13.65 million contract, it is only natural to ask oneself this: Where's the money, Lebowski? The answer to that question, man, would be in all the incentives, El Duderino. He may get $10 million guaranteed as part of his signing bonus, but only carries a base salary of $3.65 million for this upcoming season. He can make up for it with incentives.
Here is a list of every incentive baked into Rodgers' one-year contract with the Steelers for 2025.
- Playoff Berth: $500,000
- Wild Card Win/Bye: $600,000
- Divisional Round Win: $750,000
- Conference Championship Win: $1 million
- Super Bowl Win: $1.5 million
- League MVP: $1.5 million
If Rodgers were to hit all six incentives built into his contract, he could be making an additional $5.85 million for potentially only one year of service with this new team. Some of these incentives seem fairly attainable, whereas others seem completely farfetched. What you have to remember is the Steelers brought him in because they believe Rodgers can help them finally win playoff games again.
Now that we know all the numbers baked into his new deal, what incentives will Rodgers actually hit?
The likelihood of Aaron Rodgers hitting all of his new contract incentives
On Spotrac, the only incentive that seemed likely Rodgers would hit is Pittsburgh making the playoffs. Even when the team has horrendous quarterback play, the Steelers still find a way to win at least nine games annually under head coach Mike Tomlin. Winning around 11 games a season is usually good enough to qualify for the postseason in most years, even in a deep AFC. Is Rodgers two wins better?
For the sake of argument, I think we can cross off Rodgers winning NFL MVP at age-42 fairly safely. We could, and probably should, do the same with him leading the Steelers to the Super Bowl and winning their first since 2008. Thus, Rodgers is not expected to bring in any of the three incentives where he could make an additional $1 million-plus for each benchmark. What about the other two?
The getting to the divisional round and conference championship game incentives are not expected to happen, but seem like fairly realistic goals the Steelers can try to achieve. If all goes according to plan, the Steelers could win a playoff game, maybe two, and then we will go from there. Again, this franchise has not won a playoff game since the 2016 NFL season, back when only 12 teams made it.
A realistic goal is to make the AFC Championship game, but making the playoffs may only be feasible.