00:00Well, Mike, of course, he joins us from the sporting news every week.
00:04You can catch him during the basketball season on Fox Sports and on the Big Ten Network.
00:07He's on the take for the Indiana Hoosiers.
00:10He said earlier in the break that it's Aaron Rodgers mania in the Steel City.
00:17Obviously, he signed the deal finally.
00:21And, you know, everybody's on board now that he's going to be the Steelers quarterback.
00:26You wrote about it. And basically, in not so many words, you said they lowered their standards to do it.
00:34Oh, I think I said they abandoned their standards to do it, Scott.
00:38Lowered may be too gentle a way to put it.
00:42This is not like anything they've done before.
00:44And there are some who would point to the fact that they have not won a playoff game in eight seasons and say, well, good, they needed a change.
00:52But I think the fact that they have had one losing season in this century says they didn't need this kind of change.
01:00Aaron Rodgers' history of cooperation with his coaches is not elite.
01:07With his teammates, his middling, with putting himself above all others is extraordinary.
01:15And I don't see how that fits in any way to what the Steelers have been for the last 55 years and what's made them basically, if you look at if you break it down just about every other way, it's been the most successful franchise in the NFL since the 1970 merger between the AFL and NFL.
01:34And they've had three coaches for a reason, because they win.
01:38And they haven't won big lately, and that's because they haven't had great quarterback play.
01:43But I don't think getting the guy who led the Jets to, what, 5-12 last year is necessarily going to change that.
01:52Yeah, I mean, look, I actually, and you wrote about Justin Fields, and a lot of his teammates really liked him and liked the way he worked.
02:02And I liked the way he played, and I think, you know, I went to a few of the games, and he went 4-2 in those six games that he started.
02:10And then he turned around and got, you know, whatever, $40 million and 75% of it, I think you wrote, guaranteed in that deal with the Jets.
02:19I guess we'll find out in short order who's got the better deal, because they're playing each other in week one.
02:24Now, look, I have to get, would you have rather had Fields or Wilson, obviously, over this guy?
02:35Are you on the side of Fields or Wilson?
02:37I thought Wilson was terrible in December.
02:41Well, he was, but the challenge was monstrous.
02:45And just about anybody would have done the same or similar against that stretch.
02:49And then the challenge of dealing with Arthur Smith in the Cincinnati game that closed the regular season was even worse than having to try to go against Baltimore's defense or Philly's defense.
03:00It's Arthur Smith's game plan for the second Bengals game was beyond atrocious.
03:06It was, I think, maybe juvenile would be a good word for what they did in that game.
03:13Outside of the end of half, two-minute drill, and the late comeback attempt that they had where they started to throw the ball because they had no choice,
03:23they ran the ball on 11 out of 12 first downs without any success.
03:27I think they had two runs of longer than four yards in those 11.
03:31So what are you doing?
03:32You can't blame Russ for that.
03:33So my feeling was, commit to Justin Fields, tailor your offense to what makes him exceptional, and then find a quarterback in the 2026 draft.
03:47That was my preference.
03:49And at the numbers the Jets paid, I think that was a fair preference.
03:52If you didn't want to tinker with your offense and you wanted to continue to go down what you did last year,
03:58then bringing Russ back with a year's experience would have been preferable to bringing in this guy.
04:04I know there were reports that some of the people inside the organization didn't connect with Russ, to put it nicely,
04:12but I don't think any of them are going to connect with this guy because this guy's not interested in that.
04:18He's almost impossible.
04:20That's how it's gone basically his entire career.
04:25There was a great, in the documentary that Netflix produced about him, I think it's called Enigma.
04:32Aaron Rodgers' Enigma.
04:35Yeah, within a half an hour, 35 minutes of it, you have Marshawn Lynch on there talking about how,
04:42in Aaron Rodgers' time, like he worked his whole life to get to Cal, and then not long after he gets to Cal,
04:49he's telling Marshawn, don't worry about what the coaches tell you.
04:53Basically, if I call a play that I think will work, I'll take the heat.
04:57Well, why would you be doing that after all these years of trying to get to that level?
05:02Remember, he wasn't recruited out of high school, had to go to junior college,
05:05and he already thinks he knows everything.
05:07And now he thinks he knows more than that.
05:10Well, I mean, now he's just painful.
05:15I think, is there anything more painful than the NFL, you know, week of game?
05:22Okay, so when he does his national interview every week that we all have to suffer through,
05:27I don't watch his interviews, but he does his annual, every year he does these interviews with McAfee,
05:34and then he plays and whatever.
05:36When you saw him play, he was allegedly injured for like the last two months of the season with his, I guess, calf and knee.
05:44Is that what he had going?
05:46But when you watched him, did you feel that he was washed?
05:51Yes, absolutely.
05:52He played against the Steelers, and the Steelers had much less trouble dealing with him than they did with Daniel Jones.
06:00They played both New York teams last season, beat them both, and they both were in night games.
06:05I think Giants was a Monday night, and the Jets were a Sunday night.
06:09And they had much more difficulty with Daniel Jones because he was a multiple threat.
06:14They didn't have to worry about Aaron Rodgers running.
06:17They just had to worry about making sure that he didn't throw anything deep,
06:20and that's something the Steelers do really well, especially last year's team.
06:23They didn't give up a lot of long touchdown passes, especially during the early portion of the regular season when they were succeeding.
06:31And so they didn't have any trouble stopping Rodgers at all.
06:34It was one of their more comfortable wins of the 2024 regular season.
06:40So what do you think, Mike?
06:41So they got Will Howard, and so far they've had these OTAs and everything, and people say he's looked good.
06:50You saw him win a Big 12 title.
06:52You saw him win a national championship.
06:54A lot of people were surprised that he was a sixth-round pick.
06:58And what do you think their strategy, their plan is for him for the future?
07:04Because this is a one-year deal, right, with this old man.
07:07Yeah, it's a one-year deal for this season, and then they also have Mason Rudolph as a backup.
07:14I think he's under contract for two.
07:16And, of course, Howard.
07:18I don't think – honestly, I don't think they have a long-term plan for Howard.
07:21I think that it's somewhat similar to any sixth or seventh or fifth-round pick.
07:28If he happens to show you stuff that you didn't expect, great.
07:32And the more he shows, the more you'll give him a chance.
07:34But I don't think that there's a real plan for him.
07:38I think the plan is to get through this year.
07:40They have a lot of draft capital stocked.
07:43They're going to get more relative to some of the free agents they lost with comp picks.
07:49And they're going to spend some of those on trying to move up to get whichever of next year's –
07:55the class of 26 quarterbacks they like the most and that they can find, they can reach.
08:01That's the plan.
08:02And I think it's a fair plan.
08:05But I just don't think the short-term plan with Rodgers makes sense relative to the options they had.
08:10So I'm going to go to these games.
08:13And I'm going to have to sit there and root for this guy, obviously.
08:16I'm a season ticket holder.
08:18I have no choice.
08:19But am I better off just, like, waiting for that draft in Pittsburgh next year to see if they can finally capitalize on the opportunity afforded them with all those picks that they have to do something right for a change?
08:33You know, the last time they did something right, they took Ben Roethlisberger, and the guy won two Super Bowls.
08:39Yeah, I mean, this is a difficult thing to do, Scott.
08:42Lots of people get this wrong either in the choice or in the development of that choice.
08:46It is not easy to do.
08:49And the Steelers have not been in a position to draft that high very often.
08:54In 20 – around 2019, they took Devin Bush, an inside linebacker, with the 10th pick in the draft.
08:59That turned out poorly, in part because he was injured, in part because he didn't seem to have the same hunger for after work.
09:07But they can get that high in the draft with what they have to spend.
09:14And who knows, maybe with how this season goes, we'll see.
09:16I don't know how good Roethlis will be behind that defense.
