Behind the Steel Curtain
In a matter of hours, the Pittsburgh Steelers will play their biggest home game in nearly a decade, hosting the Houston Texans in the final game of wild card weekend. The Steelers won three of their final four games, including a Game of the Year candidate over the Baltimore Ravens in Week 18 to clinch the AFC North for the first time since 2020. Now, they have another opportunity to end another drought – the playoff win drought that every Steelers fan has talked about for the better part of three years.
The Steelers got to this point in large part due to the masterful play of Aaron Rodgers over the last month of the season. And no matter the end result of the wild card tilt with the Texans, Rodgers has already proven everyone who doubted him wrong.
Ahead of the season, just about everyone outside of Pittsburgh, and many within the Steelers’ media landscape and fanbase, bashed the signing of Rodgers. Not only that, but they painted it as the Steelers operating on Rodgers’ time because he didn’t join the team until late June for mandatory minicamp. And in the lead-up to the season, everyone with a microphone or shouty TV show was metaphorically boxing each other out to get their bashing of Rodgers in first. But don’t worry – receipts were kept.
First, let’s start with Dan Graziano of ESPN who, back in May, said Rodgers was “a shell” of his former self.
“Everyone wants to talk about Aaron Rodgers going to the Steelers, and that’s their hope,” Graziano said via Daniel Bates. This is not MVP Aaron Rodgers. This is not 2020 Aaron Rodgers. This is a shell of that. “He was a bad quarterback in the NFL last season. He was not markedly better last season than Mason Rudolph was for the Tennessee Titans when he played.”
Former Steeler Ryan Clark called Rodgers the “worst possible case scenario” for the Steelers
“This is the worst-case scenario for Pittsburgh Steelers fans,” Clark said via Chantz Martin. “It continues to keep you mired in mediocrity. Will this team be better? Have they gotten better in the quarterback room? Absolutely. Will they contend for that championship that Pittsburgh Steelers people and fans and organization think is the standard? No, they won’t… They’ll be fighting for a wild-card spot. They’ll probably be home week one of the playoffs and again be looking for a franchise quarterback.”
This is certainly just skimming the surface of the narrative from the national media, which took turns treating Rodgers like a piñata for months upon months before he ever took a snap in Pittsburgh. And right away in Week 1, he shut a lot of people up by throwing four touchdowns in the Steelers’ win against his former team, the New York Jets, which was the first step in repainting the picture of the end of his career.
Rodgers finished the regular season with 24 touchdown passes (more than Jordan Love and Patrick...
