The Pittsburgh Steelers' long courtship of Aaron Rodgers came to an end last Thursday. After months of flirtatious glances across the negotiation table, impromptu workouts with Steelers players, and 2 a.m. “U up,” texts, the union was made official. However, when one chapter ends, another begins.
Now that speculation over where Rodgers will play is over, how he’ll play will become the predominant storyline. As a four-time MVP, Rodgers will get the benefit of the doubt that most 41-year-old quarterbacks would not receive. After a down season in 2024, oneworld thought the decline would continue for Rodgers, but historically, that hasn’t always been the case. Here are several comparable quarterbacks of Rodgers’ ilk and how they played facing their career grim reaper.
Tom Brady, Brett Favre, Vinny Testaverde, and Warren Moon are the only quarterbacks to start 10+ games in a season at age 40 or older. Moon was an emergency starter replacing an injured Elvis Grbac and Testaverde ascended to the starting job after Quincy Carter was cut for failing a drug test.
Tom Brady is considered the outlier. He won an MVP at age 40, and two more rings, including one in Tampa Bay at the age of 43. Unfortunately, the Steelers aren’t as loaded as those Bucs were at nearly level to contend. Arthur Smith is also two tiers below Bruce Arian’ on the offensive play-calling food chain. Rodgers isn’t realistically touching that gold standard, but here are some realistic scenarios for how his 2025 season could turn out.
Aaron Rodgers could be 2009 Brett Favre
If Rodgers continues following Favre’s career arc as a Packer-turned-Jet-turned mercenary and league pariah, he’s in for a strong 2025 campaign.
Before Brady, Favre’s 2009 season with the Minnesota Vikings was the gold standard of senescent gunslingers. After getting chased out of New York, Favre rang up 33 touchdowns to just seven interceptions during a bounceback year for the ages.
As with so many of Favre’s seasons that ended in Shakespearian fashion, a late interception in the NFC Championship Game against New Orleans put the kibosh on his pursuit of a second Super Bowl. Pittsburgh’s odds of repeating the Vikings' run aren’t favorable. Kaleb Jonnson is no prime Adrian Peterson, but if Arthur Smith stays out of the way and stops calling pitches on 3rd and 5, Rodgers has the intellect and petty motivation to engineer something special if he channels this version of Favre.
Aaron Rodgers could be 2015 Peyton Manning, wobbling his way to a title
Lost in the Broncos final season was that inverse of Marino’s. Manning completely fell off of the cliff. Whether it was his spinal fusion procedure finally catching up to him or just the rapid progression of age-related decline, Manning’s numbers don’t express how poorly he played.
He threw nearly twice as many touchdowns as interceptions, couldn’t throw consistent spirals on passes that traveled more than 10 yards, and his passes twerked mid-air. However, Manning understood his game manager role while the Broncos defense produced one of the all-time great defensive seasons. If he were to pull off this sort of miracle, the city might have to name a sandwich after rodgers.
The darkest timeline for Aaron Rodgers is 1999 Dan Marino
Marino reached the postseason during a stunningly mediocre final season in which he threw more interceptions than touchdowns for the first time in his career. All things considered, it was a vanilla ending. Marino’s final season wouldn’t be remembered so ignominiously if it weren’t for how he got housed by his own petard in Miami’s 55-point loss to Jacksonville in his final start. It was the football equivalent of slipping on a banana peel into a pit of snakes.
Jimmy Johnson retired the next day. He was only three years younger than Tomlin is now. It would be foolish to suggest that Tomlin would retire from coaching anytime soon, but If Rodgers fails to end the Steelers playoff drought next season, the Steelers may entertain offers for him.