Aaron Rodgers’s 184-minute visit with Joe Rogan revealed no clues about his football destination for 2025. A 32-second clip that surfaced on Friday does.
During an appearance last weekend in Austin with a rapper who goes by the stage name of “Mike Stud,” Rodgers was asked whether he’d ever sign with the Bears.
“I believe there’s a team that might play in Chicago this year on a road trip,” Rodgers replied.
The Steelers play in Chicago this year. The Saints do, too, but there has been no link between the quarterback-needy Saints and the free agent who says he’s up for anything and committed to nothing.
At some point, sooner than later, he’ll presumably committing to something for 2025. For now, the wait continues.
Since Ben Roethlisberger retired after the 2021 season, the Steelers have had five starting quarterbacks. They have tried the draft (Kenny Pickett), a trade (Justin Fields) and free agency (Russell Wilson).
They remain in search.
The Steelers brought back Mason Rudolph, a third-round pick in 2018, in free agency and drafted Will Howard in the sixth-round. They also have Skylar Thompson on their roster.
Aaron Rodgers, though, might end up being the bridge quarterback for 2025. Owner Art Rooney II said this week the Steelers were willing to wait “a little while longer” for Rodgers to make a decision.
“I don’t know what’s going to happen,” Howard told Kay Adams on Up and Adams this week. “That’s all over my head. But I’d love to be in a room and learn from him. Again, who knows what’s going to happen. I have no idea and that’s above my head.”
Howard, at some point, will get a chance to prove he’s the franchise quarterback the Steelers long have sought. He believes he has what the Steelers seek.
“They need like a gritty guy,” Howard said. “Growing up for me, watching the Pittsburgh Steelers and Big Ben, Big Ben was that guy. He was Pittsburgh. He was the Steel City, the blue collar and gritty guy. And I want to be that, too. I want to bring that edge and that energy. I think I did a pretty good job of it at Ohio State, and I kind of like to pride myself on that and I’m going to try and bring it to the Steel City.”
Steelers owner Art Rooney II said this week that the team is willing to wait “a little while longer” on Aaron Rodgers. The quarterback remains unsigned and either will play in Pittsburgh or not play at all this season.
Steelers players apparently aren’t waiting with baited breath: If he comes, he comes; if he doesn’t, he doesn’t.
“I think we just try to put our best foot forward every day,” edge rusher Alex Highsmith told NFL Media. “Like with who’s in the building right now. I know Mason [Rudolph] being there, he’s done a great job. The guys are rallying around him and, like I said, he’s been with us before and guys know him; Pittsburgh fans know him. The way that he helped us finish in 2023 was awesome.
“No matter who’s back there for us, whether it’s him or if Aaron Rodgers is going to come, I’m just excited. Whoever’s back there, we’re going to have their backs and we’re going to rally behind them. Just excited for whoever it’s going to be.”
Rudolph is taking the first-team snaps for now, with rookie Will Howard and Skylar Thompson behind him. The Rodgers questions continue, though Highsmith said it is not a distraction.
“I get asked a lot by my peers and some friends who are fans and stuff like that,” Highsmith said. “I just feel like in the locker room, we’re in there working, and I think that’s just really what it’s about at this point. I know that if he does sign, we’re definitely going to be really excited to have him. We know who he is. He’s a Hall of Fame quarterback. He’s one of the best to ever do it.
“I wouldn’t say it’s a distraction at all, but we all know what type of quarterback he is and what he brings to the table.”
Super Bowl XLIII MVP Santonio Holmes is back in football, more than a decade after his NFL career ended.
Holmes is the new receivers coach at Central State University in Ohio.
A first-round pick from Ohio State in 2006, Holmes capped his third NFL season with a game-winning catch in the franchise’s sixth Super Bowl win.
His best season came the next year, when he caught 79 passes for 1,248 yards. He signed with the Jets as a free agent in 2010. He spent four so-so seasons in New York before finishing his career in 2014 in Chicago.
At Central State, Holmes joins the staff of former NFL cornerback Tony Carter, who played for the Broncos, Patriots, Colts, and Saints. Carter was hired earlier this year.
Central State has produced 21 NFL players, including Orlando Brown, Hugh Douglas, and Erik Williams.
On Wednesday, a new episode landed of the Joe Rogan Experience. His guest was free-agent quarterback Aaron Rodgers.
Over the past two days, I’ve listened to all three hours. I took some notes. Ultimately, there was no indication given (and no question asked) regarding if or when he’ll sign with the Steelers or any team.
The closest Rodgers came to addressing his football situation happened when he mentioned that a “number of people in my life” are battling cancer. That meshes with prior comment to Pat McAfee that Rodgers’s inability to commit to a team flows from personal issues.
As to his future, Rodgers addressed only the question of whether he’ll continue to live in California. “I think I’m gonna get out,” he said.
The rest of the 184-minute conversation was a flee-flowing back-and-forth on a variety of non-football topics. I came away from the exchange with three inescapable conclusions, in addition to wanting those three hours of my life back.
First, Rodgers loves conspiracy theories. All of them. On every topic. In his view, everything that happens can be explained by some alternate truth the government is hiding from us.
Some of his theories are obviously rooted in faulty premises. They killed the guy who came up with a water-powered car! Even though there’s, you know, no way to get chemical energy from water.
There’s a loose nonchalance to some of it. For example, Rodgers wondered aloud why the Johnny Depp civil trial was televised but the Diddy criminal trial isn’t. They basically shrugged at the unspoken assumption that it must be something nefarious and moved on, when the simple (and accurate) explanation is that state-court trials (like Depp’s) can be televised and federal-court trials (like Diddy’s) cannot be televised.
On the broader point, if you believe that every accepted truth is not really true but instead the product of a conspiracy theory to hide the truth, you’ll eventually be right about some of them. You’ll also be wrong about many of them. Conspiracies are hard to maintain. Too many people have to keep quiet, indefinitely. And then when anyone who possibly knew the truth dies of natural causes, they of course were killed by someone seeking to keep the secret.
Some of Rodgers’s casually-mentioned ideas seem objectively nutty. At one point, Rodgers said Robert F. Kennedy’s former running mate, Nicole Shanahan, thinks someone is now “controlling” Bobby.
There’s plenty of other stuff. From nanobots in vaccines that come together in the body under certain frequencies (Rogan wasn’t willing to accept that one) to the pyramids and other Egyptian landmarks having been built by aliens to aliens currently living in the ocean and otherwise walking among us to sudden infant death syndrome being caused by vaccines to Alex Jones being right about pretty much everything. (Last year, CNN reported that Rodgers had “shared deranged conspiracy theories” about the Sandy Hook shooting not being real. He later denied it, sort of.)
Two, Rodgers cannot quit talking about COVID. He presumes that everything about the government’s response was a lie, that the vaccine never worked for anyone, that anyone who received a vaccine and then criticized him about anything is bought and paid for by the pharmaceutical companies, and that he is personally owed apologies and/or accountability from someone/anyone/everyone.
It’s so much more than Rodgers believing that, for him, the vaccine wasn’t necessary. He speaks derisively of anyone who received it, and he has plain disdain for those who choose to wear masks.
Why does he care if people decided to get the vaccine? Why does he care if people believe they should wear masks in order to protect their health (or to keep a contagious illness that they have from spreading)?
He repeated his chronic claim that anyone who ever says anything about him should first disclose their vax status. Here’s my answer: I did what my doctor advised me to do, given my overall medical situation. (If/when Rodgers signs with the Steelers, he’ll probably meet him. Perhaps when Rodgers shows up for his physical.)
Third, Rodgers has very strong conservative political beliefs. And that’s his prerogative. He also believes, as more and more now realize, that Joe Biden suffered cognitive decline during his four-year term as president.
But there was an edge to Rodgers’s comments that seemed at times to be disrespectful. There was almost a sense of glee, and downright meanness, when he mocked Biden for his age-related infirmities.
At one point, Rodgers referred to Biden as a “fucking neck sniffer.”
We’ll all get old, if we’re lucky. Few will retain their full faculties until they climb into bed at 100 and don’t wake up. And while it’s now apparent that someone was working to hide Biden’s condition until it could no longer be concealed, that doesn’t translate to an open-ended license to make fun of an old man who is going through the things old men go through.
The fact that Rodgers has yet to succumb to the realities of aging when it comes to throwing a football will make him attractive to a team like the Steelers, regardless of whether he loves conspiracy theories, won’t stop litigating COVID, and/or makes mean-spirited comments about an 82-year-old old man who is showing all the signs (and then some) of being 82 years old.
Still, there can be no doubt based on his latest appearance with Rogan about who they are getting. And it’s for the Steelers to decide whether Rodgers’s unique proclivities will be a fit in the locker room. Or whether they’ll deal with the other stuff once he throws a pass and it whizzes by someone’s helmet with a sound that the players have never heard before.
For the Steelers, the sound of a Rodgers piss missile will likely overcome the sound of any of the bullshit that comes out of his mouth.
