The Pittsburgh Steelers are undertaking a serious risk in the 2025 season. With likely only one season of Aaron Rodgers under center, the Steelers will not be satisfied with anything less than a championship in what might be the final season for the Hall of Fame quarterback.
While the Steelers may have been giving off the impression of an aggressive team willing to pull out all the stops in the name of slipping a championship ring across their fingers, some see the moves as slapdash and haphazard. In their minds, 2025 is going to end in disaster for this regime.
Vic Tafur of The Athletic believes that the Steelers will win fewer than the 8.5 wins they are projected to pick up this season, citing the notion that the acquisitions of Rodgers, Jalen Ramsey, and others seem less like an all-in move and more like a desperate decision by a front office that doesn't quite know how to make it all gel.
Pittsburgh has famously never had a losing season with Mike Tomlin as head coach, but Tafur thinks the Rodgers quotient factoring into things is enough to send Tomlin tumbling down into the ranks of the mediocre this season.
Pittsburgh Steelers projected to win less than 8.5 games in 2025
Pittsburgh has always been able to put together quality rosters in the last few years of the Tomlin era. However, creating an explosive offense led by a consistent quarterback and more than one high-end wide receiver has proven to be a major challenge for Omar Khan.
Rodgers is ultimately going to be who determines how high the ceiling is for this team. In a perfect world, Rodgers will prove that his time with the New York Jets went wrong because of poor coaching and general Jets-related chaos. He did throw for 4,000 yards and 28 touchdowns after all.
The worst-case scenario, however, would lead to the Steelers crashing and burning in the worst way possible. Rodgers would show his age, and many of the Steelers' big-name additions would look more like a flailing team grasping at straws than a championship contender trying their best to contend.
The Steelers will need to both give a 42-year-old quarterback an offense that can maximize his skillset and beat some of the top dogs in what has become a very competitive AFC. If not, the doomsday scenario of a sub-.500 season may become a reality in 2025.