It sure looks like the Steelers or bust for Aaron Rodgers

The Pittsburgh Steelers had two starting quarterbacks on their 2024 roster. Depending on how strongly you feel about Mason Rudolph, they currently have none for 2025.

Both Justin Fields and Russell Wilson left the Steel City for northern New Jersey, signing with the New York Jets and New York Giants, respectively. After trading for a big bodied deep threat tailor made for Wilson's moon ball deep throws (D.K. Metcalf), Pittsburgh let Wilson linger in free agency for nearly two weeks. The Giants, even after signing Jameis Winston to a two-year contract, shrugged and said "why not" when it came to the former Super Bowl champion.

That may be enough to push the Giants' ceiling back up to somewhere near .500. But that's not the most interesting part of Wilson's arrival. It's that New York is yet another team that doesn't want Aaron Rodgers.

The Giants were rumored to be considering Rodgers after the Jets designated him a post-June 1 release earlier this month. They passed in favor of a younger quarterback with a fraction of Rodgers's overall NFL success. The Minnesota Vikings were reported to have interest in Rodgers as a potential veteran bridge to 2024 draft pick J.J. McCarthy. They passed in favor of a much younger quarterback with no NFL success.

Now the only franchise left without a QB1 on the depth chart is the Steelers.

There's logic to a union. Pittsburgh won 10 games with an aging quarterback whose mobility has decreased significantly last season by riding Wilson to the team's semi-annual uncompetitive wild card loss. Rodgers isn't terribly dissimilar from Wilson; he can't escape the pocket easily, he's had to dial back his average throw distance and, importantly, he does his best work on big shots downfield.

But he was, statistically, less effective than Wilson.

That's not something that's going to improve with his 42nd birthday looming in December. Another year removed from 2023's torn Achilles offers some hope, but no one knows if a full recovery is an option because, in NFL terms, Rodgers is a dinosaur.

Barring a trade, this step backward may be the Steelers' best hope. The other available veteran quarterbacks as of March 26 are guys like Carson Wentz, Joe Flacco, Trey Lance and Desmond Ridder. Pittsburgh has the 21st selection in a 2025 NFL Draft with two -- or maybe 1.5, depending on how scouts evaluate Shedeur Sanders -- viable franchise quarterbacks. The Steelers are once more cursed by their own competence; not good enough to be a Super Bowl contender and nowhere near bad enough to start fresh at the game's most important position without getting extremely lucky.

So Pittsburgh may have no better option than a guy who may not crack the top 25 when it comes to NFL quarterbacks next season. The same man who invites a media circus wherever he goes, then blames the media for listening to him. The Steelers have backed themselves into a corner and their only chance to fight their way out lies in the malfunctioning BB gun who was once a four-time NFL MVP.

Head coach Mike Tomlin could still make it work, because he coaxed a .500 season out of Rudolph and Duck Hodges once upon a time. But while the Steelers might be decent, they won't be great -- no matter what Rodgers might say.