This Sunday night, Aaron Rodgers will face the franchise he spent 19 years with as the Pittsburgh Steelers host the Green Bay Packers. It’s arguably the most anticipated regular-season matchup of the 2025 season until after Thanksgiving because of the history between the future Hall of Fame quarterback and the storied franchise from a little city in Wisconsin.
Few have the personal context of the emotional warfare Rodgers is about to undertake. As he said on Wednesday, he doesn’t see the game as a revenge opportunity. In a Thursday Zoom conference, he made it clear he intends to retire as a Packer and holds no animosity toward the franchise he called home for nearly two decades.
Still, he has to prepare and execute at his highest level to play and potentially beat his former team for the betterment of his current employer. It’s not a situation many quarterbacks have had to face. If the Steelers win, Rodgers will join Tom Brady, Drew Brees, Peyton Manning, and Brett Favre as the only quarterbacks who have beaten all 32 NFL franchises.
It’s something Steelers fans are glad their own legendary quarterbacks never had to do.
Pittsburgh Steelers fans are lucky to not know the conflict of facing a legendary former quarterback
Pittsburgh isn’t like most NFL franchises. They believe in home-grown talent and respect the pursuit of the best of that talent to finish as one-helmet players. T.J. Watt and Cam Heyward are the next hopefuls for a Hall of Fame career spent entirely in the stoic black and gold uniform worn by the Steelers.
Ben Roethlisberger was the most recent, despite playing in an era where Brady, Brees, Manning, and Favre all left their original franchises for one reason or another, only to have to play and beat them to make NFL history.
Roethlisberger has joked about coming out of retirement on his podcast and in other media ventures since his curtain call in 2021. But he often follows that up with saying he couldn’t see himself putting on another uniform, much to the delight and comfort of Steelers Nation.
Steelers fans are focused on getting a win against one of the more impressive teams in the NFL this season. It’s a benchmark matchup in primetime that can reveal to Steelers and NFL fans if the Steelers are contenders in 2025, or just the same old Steelers we’ve seen for the past decade.
But as Steelers superfan and podcaster Kevin Adams pointed out, Packers fans are in another plane of existence for this game that Steelers fans might not be able to sympathize with. Yeah, James Harrison, Franco Harris, and Alan Faneca, among many others, played somewhere else - but they aren’t the quarterback.
Terry Bradshaw didn’t play anywhere else. Only the few passers who didn’t find success with Pittsburgh as a starting quarterback since 1970 have played somewhere else, and if they did, Pittsburgh didn’t have to face them, i.e., Kordell Stewart. The only true qualifiers are Mark Malone and Neil O'Donnell, who did face (and beat) Pittsburgh after they left the franchise. But I don't have to tell you how those examples pale in comparison to Rodgers taking on Green Bay.
This Sunday night, Packers fans have to root against arguably the greatest quarterback in their storied history, not just for the first time, but for the fifth time. Favre went 2-2 against Green Bay. This will likely be the only time Rodgers faces Green Bay. There are no rubber matches scheduled.
Like I said, Pittsburgh isn’t like most franchises, but if there is one to compare, it’s Green Bay. Another franchise that builds through the draft in a smashmouth division and relishes cold December games at home with a blue-collar mentality.
Yet, in this scenario, there is no common ground, and it’s a blessing from the football gods that Steelers fans have never had to experience it.