The Circus Comes to Town
With less than two weeks to go until the draft, Aaron Rodgers, Shedeur Sanders, and trading T.J. Watt or George Pickens are all potentially in the mix for the Steelers.
I was planning on waiting until Aaron Rodgers to the Steelers was official before committed a lengthy post to the subject. Now that the four-time MVP’s decision-making process has extended beyond a month with no clear end in sight, might as well get it over with.
In all likelihood, it probably doesn’t even matter that much whether Rodgers goes to Pittsburgh, New Orleans, retires, or finishes replicating Brett Favre’s career arc by joining Minnesota. While he began showing signs of improvement late in the 2024 washout season with the Jets, and quarterbacks recovering from a torn Achilles tend to take more than a full year to return to form (especially if said QB is in his 40s), the idea that Rodgers will suddenly revert to a championship-caliber passer, even with a loaded roster around him, is a long shot to say the least.
Which isn’t to suggest I’m totally against the notion of rooting for him for 2025. An offense centered on Rodgers, DK Metcalf, and George Pickens would be excellent for trolling, and possibly fun to watch. Going on the Steelers subreddit the past few weeks, it has brought me no shortage of amusement watching some of the more melodramatic fans assert that they will stop rooting for or stop watching the team if they sign Rodgers. First of all, you will do no such thing. Shut the fuck up. Secondly, where exactly was your high horse when they had Ben Roethlisberger under center?
While that seems like an extreme reaction, one has to be familiar with what has happened to Reddit and online sports fandom over the last 10 to 15 years for it to make sense. Reddit, once a haven of libertarians, has turned into the most aggressively astroturfed social media platform by liberals aside from maybe Bluesky. Go to any Reddit NFL sub and you’ll find a small army of commenters constantly tripping over themselves to proclaim how much they hate Deshaun Watson and Rodgers, which is funny on its own given how wide the gulf is between what Watson and Rodgers have supposedly done to earn that hatred. Ever since Rodgers had an issue with the Covid vaccine, libs have been frothing at the mouth with rage at him no matter what. He can be flaky and self-absorbed, for sure, but the hate-a-thon is so reflexive and extreme, it makes him more sympathetic thn he would be otherwise.
For weeks, updates on his decision have been posted on various football subs, each one eliciting comments to the tune of “UGH ATTENTION WHORE RODGERS AT IT AGAIN!!!!” Then you read the article that got posted, and Rodgers hasn’t actually said anything. It’s just another content merchant speculating on what he might do. So these types can’t even fathom that they’re helping drive the neverending flow of Rodgers news because they can’t ever stop reacting to it and flipping out about it.
Within the last week or so, there’s been mounting belief that Shedeur Sanders is a slight possibility to fall in the draft to the 21st pick where the Steelers could snag him. I’d be willing for them to take a chance on Shedeur at 21, or even a short trade-up, but let’s not pretend that wouldn’t come with its own set of headaches.
The racial politics around Mike Tomlin are already difficult to navigate. We know the lack of diversity among football coaches is an issue both on the college and pro levels, but that doen’t mean you have to permanently suck off any black coach who has any measure of success. The liberal sports media take on Tomlin is that if the Steelers ever moved on from him, he would have a new job in 30 seconds flat. There’s truth to that, though it’s partially owed to how incestuous NFL coaching circles are. What is never mentioned is that Tomlin’s résumé at this point is fairly similar to Mike McCarthy’s, and McCarthy is never discussed by the media or casual fans with the kind of reverent tones that Tomlin is. Hell, McCarthy has a better postseason record, and has beaten Tomlin head-to-head in a Super Bowl.
If there’s anyone in football the race discourse gets more heated around, it’s Deion Sanders. If you don’t remember Colorado’s hot start in 2023 during his first season as head coach, it was unbearable, at least the way it was talked about. I had a free trial of Sirius in my car that fall and remember listening to a Fox Sports Radio show with two black men hosts who flat-out asserted that if anyone wasn’t rooting for Deion, it’s because they were racist. Cut me a fuckin’ break. Deion was a great player, already shaping up to be a decent to good coach, but as a person he’s obnoxious as hell. Somehow Rodgers’ personality flaws mean he should be burned at the stake while Deion gets a halo effect regardless of what a preening dickhead he is at all times. You need to pick your battles a little better if you’re gonna pull this “if you don’t like one particular guy, you’re racist” bullshit. At the time I was working as a ticket writer at a sportbook in a casino with both a majority black clientele and majority black management. The amount of racist treatment I got there from customers and my bosses is something I still haven’t gotten over, and it got downright deranged over Deion.
For a couple week stretch, when the Buffs were rolling and the hype was in overdrive, there’d frequently be black men customers who would come up to the counter and grill me, “How much money y’all lose on Colorado?” It was always in this pointed tone, as if the guy imagined me cartoonishly shaking my jowls at the sight of Colorado winning, and bellowing, “How dare this shiftless negro do this to the white man’s game!”
To answer his question, I don’t fucking know, because the bosses generally don’t share that information with a lowly ticket writer. Moreover, I don’t fucking care. When the book makes money, I don’t get any of it. When the book takes a loss, it doesn’t come out of my check. But for them, these bitter race essentialists, they just saw a white dude, albeit one working a miserable customer service job, and decided rubbing it in my face was as good as doing it to whatever version of The Man they had granted abundant real estate in their head. One called me Trump because I didn’t laugh at one of his dumbass jokes.
The one benefit with Tomlin and Shedeur is that the former is prominent and established enough that Deion would have a harder time bullying him than he would with lesser coaches. Them being the same race also ruins the potential for Deion to inject that into the conversation if he disapproves of how a team handles the development of his son, and don’t believe that’s not a possibility. We’re not even getting into whether Shedeur is a good QB prospect, a matter on which there is a bit of disagreement, though there often is with first-round passers.
The main problem for me is, if Tomlin has his first losing season with Rodgers, the team could have an opening to move on. They’ll have brought in accomplished veteran arms in consecutive seasons to complement a roster that was supposedly only a QB away from contention, then fell on their face. Hard not to point fingers at the coach in that scenario. The next coach would have a chance to start fresh with a high draft pick in a 2026 QB class that is expected to be better than this one, plus Pittsburgh is hosting the draft next yer.
If the team lands Shedeur and he becomes the starter in short order, the Steelers could completely tank and they’d be hard-pressed to move on from Tomlin without getting a huge rash and a shit about it. “You’ll mess up the QB’s development if you switch coaches now! It’s only Tomlin’s first losing season, and it came with a rookie QB!”
As you can see, there’s high potential for chaos with either of these paths, or if they somehow get both QBs. To spike cortisol levels further, there’s speculation the team could be moving on from T.J. Watt, based on a wordless Instagram Story in which the star edge rusher posted a pic of himself throwing up a peace sign amid contract negotiations. I’d miss T.J., but he’ll be 31 this fall, and if they can get sufficient value in a trade for him now, I’m cool with it, especially with Nick Herbig, who I don’t think would be that much of a dropoff, waiting in the wings.
Suffice it to say, I’ll try to enjoy whatever madness this season offers, but I’m ready to blow it all up once it’s over.