Steelers Now
PITTSBURGH — Arthur Smith really did not want Russell Wilson back with the Pittsburgh Steelers.
In his minicamp press conference on Wednesday, the Steelers offensive coordinator took a question about how much control new quarterback Aaron Rodgers will have in his ability to change plays at the line of scrimmage and things of that nature — something that has been a hot-button topic regarding Rodgers for a while — and took his answer all the way back to the end of last season, finally returning fire after an anonymously-sourced dart from January.
If you don’t recall, it was reported at the end of the 2024 season, after the Steelers lost their final five games, continuing a now-eight-year playoff losing streak, that Smith had reduced Wilson’s ability to do things like make changes at the line of scrimmage over the stretch run of the season.
It wasn’t directly stated, but the implication was that it was more the fault of Smith than Wilson that things went so poorly at the end of the season.
Steelers Now sources reported at the time that the story getting out in the fashion that it did led the Steelers coaching staff and locker room to turn on Wilson, and was a contributing factor to him not returning to the team in 2025.
Asked about Rodgers on Wednesday, Smith took the opportunity to set the record straight.
“We’ve got multiple things that evolve every year, depending on who the quarterback is, just like we did last year, and it didn’t change,” Smith said. “With Justin [Fields] or Russ, and the way we tried to evolve, it didn’t change. Whether we’re talking about cans, checks, alerts, signals, you want to put those in audibles, great, but we never fundamentally changed. I mean, we obviously schematically shifted to try to play a little bit differently with Justin than Russ, but the operation never changed. So, whatever the fantastical narrative was that we’re just calling plays at the line, I don’t know the history of the reference.”
Smith got his wish. Wilson is now with the New York Giants. In his place, is a quarterback that has been known to do things his own way.
In Enigma, the Rodgers-approved Netflix documentary about the quarterback that debuted last year, there’s a clip from his college days telling teammate Marshawn Lynch to run the route he wants him to run instead of the one that was called.
Rodgers was criticized last year in New York for too frequently changing the play at the line of scrimmage and dominating the Jets’ offensive scheme with his own personal preference.
Rodgers also pushed back on those allegations during his press conference on Tuesday.
“The idea that somehow I need to, or have spent most of my career playing outside of an offensive system, is just not correct,” Rogers said. “I’m going to learn the offense, and Arthur and I are going to talk a bunch this summer. If there’s things that I like that...
