Total Pro Sports
Aaron Rodgers and the Pittsburgh Steelers are playing the waiting game in free agency, although the Steelers aren’t willing participants.
The veteran quarterback has been a target for the AFC North franchise since the end of last season. Still, he’s been non-committal, revealing on ‘The Pat McAfee Show’ that there are people in his inner circle “battling difficult stuff,” while he also has other serious commitments.
According to Ian O’Connor, the man who authored his biography, Rodgers doesn’t want to join the team because he might not be ready to practice and doesn’t want to sign and then not show up for minicamp.
“I just think verbally, behind the scenes, not that he guaranteed it, but he’s told [the Steelers], ‘Listen, I’m gonna play for you. I just don’t want to go there and then miss part of mandatory minicamp because of my personal issues,” O’Connor told 93.7 The Fan (H/T Sports Illustrated).
O’Connor suggested that closure will come, one way or the other, by the end of May.
‘‘I’m pretty sure they’re gonna be solved by the end of May, at least in my satisfaction where I can give you my all.’ So that’s where I think it is,” he added.
The ‘Out of the Darkness: The Mystery of Aaron Rodgers’ author also predicted that A-Rod will be in uniform by June 10, voicing a suspicion that the veteran QB would “honor” mandatory practice this time around, should he sign with Pittsburgh, after what happened last year.
“If I had $100 to put down, my feeling is he’ll be in uniform June 10 for the start of the mandatory minicamp,” he continued.
Rodgers was heavily criticized for missing two days of mandatory minicamp with the New York Jets so he could take a trip to Egypt. Former HC Robert Saleh claimed then that the absence was “unexcused.”
“I don’t know about OTAs [on May 27]. … I think that word ‘mandatory,’ after what he went through last year when he missed two practices to be checking out the pyramids in Egypt, he took so much grief for that that I think he will honor that,” O’Connor noted. “And my suspicion is that Mike Tomlin has given a verbal sign-off to that already.”
The absence resulted in a $50,000 fine for Rodgers, and it was all downhill from there.
