Steelers Now
The long Aaron Rodgers saga is nearly over, as the former MVP is expected to be in Pittsburgh on Friday to finally sign with the Pittsburgh Steelers after months of flirting.
Rodgers will report to the team’s mandatory minicamp at UPMC Rooney Sports Complex next week, and after that, join the club for training camp at St. Vincent College near Latrobe, Pa.
There is a whole lot of football between now and the start of the 2025 season, including three preseason games, but it’s hard not to notice the next official game on the Steelers’ schedule with Rodgers on board: The New York Jets.
The Steelers will be visiting the Jets in Week 1, where Rodgers will be facing the team that spurned him earlier this offseason.
Rodgers was released by the Jets earlier this offseason, and the star quarterback was quite disgruntled by the way that exit was handled, he revealed in an interview with Pat McAfee in April.
Rodgers recounted flying to New York to meet with new Jets head coach Aaron Glenn, and that meeting going very poorly.
“I think we’re gonna have this long conversation,” Rodgers said. “I’ve flown across the country. Twenty seconds in … I’m talking to the GM about something and [Glenn] leans to the edge of his seat and goes, ‘So, do you want to play football?’
“And I was like, ‘Yeah, I’m interested.’
“Then he says, ‘We’re going in a different direction at quarterback.’
“I was kind of shocked.”
Rodgers will get his chance to show Glenn and the Jets what he could have been doing for them, with his first game in black and gold scheduled for Sept. 7 at the Meadowlands.
Of course, the Jets will have a quarterback revenge game of their own on tap. The Steelers’ first choice at quarterback this offseason was to re-sign Justin Fields, but when the Jets offered a two-year contract with $30 million in guarantees, the Steelers balked at the price, letting Fields walk out the door and turning their sights on Rodgers.
But Fields downplayed the revenge angle.
“That’s who we play Week 1,” Fields said. “There wasn’t really a thought to that.”
This article originally appeared on Steelers Now: Revenge Game: Aaron Rodgers, Justin Fields Storylines Provide Fireworks for Steelers Opener vs. Jets
