AARON RODGERS MUST BECOME A PITTSBURGH YINZER — HELP! — OR SAY GOODBYE
The Vikings are set with J.J. McCarthy and the Giants are set with Russell Wilson and Jameis Winston, and while some of us hope Rodgers retires, the Steelers have waited patiently as their fans brood
They are worried in Pittsburgh about Aaron Rodgers learning “yinz.” It’s the local way to say “y’all,” which never has evolved from his mouth to begin with, considering he’s the most selfish snake in sports. Yinz is no different than eating a pierogi or drinking an Iron City at the dive bar. He’ll blow off yinz because it’s far beneath him, unless it comes with a hallucinating drug.
For that reason, many fans hope he doesn’t join the Steelers. If Rodgers isn’t cool with local truths, he should retire from the NFL and apologize to TV networks that demand he take image rehab courses. He experienced hell in New York. He could be tossed into the Allegheny, Ohio or Monongahela Rivers in The ‘Burgh, if not all three. He told the team weeks ago that he’s interested, then met Friday for more than six hours with head coach Mike Tomlin, offensive coordinator Arthur Smith and general manager Omar Khan at the training facility.
And he still hasn’t decided as April arrives, though the Minnesota Vikings clearly are aligned with J.J. McCarthy as their featured quarterback while the New York Giants have signed Russell Wilson and Jameis Winston. A decision to nix the Steelers would be the end of Rodgers as a legendary but cuckoo quarterback, at long last.
I would prefer that. You know: So long, goodbye, and see you in Canton with only one Super Bowl ring and a lot of lying about vaccination, not to mention too much junk about Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and general crap about celebrity life.
But he is coming back, I’m afraid, for one last run in a division where the Baltimore Ravens might reach the Super Bowl and the Cincinnati Bengals might score 40 points a game. It should bug Steelers owner Art Rooney II that Rodgers has placed his franchise on pause, particularly after Tomlin ignored his wish about Wilson and Justin Fields: “I think they’re both capable quarterbacks, and my preference would be to sign one of them. That will be the priority.” Wilson signed a $21 million contract with the Giants, who gave him $10.5 million guaranteed, after Fields joined the other New York team — the Jets, where Rodgers struggled — with $30 million guaranteed at a $40 million total.
And while Rodgers can disappear on another darkness retreat and hope McCarthy’s knee blows out in July — that would be sick — he will play in Pittsburgh. Never mind that many folks would rather see Ben Roethlisberger dump his podcast and return at 43, which might make sense when Rodgers turns 42. What he needs to do is show up, have a news conference and say he wants to win another championship and have his statue — in the realm of Franco Harris — installed at the new airport.
Does he want to be a leader in his final stop? It’s a necessity when his top receivers are talented but angry deep threats — DK Metcalf and George Pickens. Imagine Rodgers in the same room with those two and Tomlin, who can shout with the loudest. T.J. Watt wants glory on defense, so, sure, Rodgers could win when he couldn’t at MetLife Stadium. Already, he has gained progress from defensive captain Cameron Heyward, who last week said he wouldn’t recruit Rodgers and barked: “I ain't doing that darkness retreat. I don't need any of that crap. Either you want to be a Pittsburgh Steeler or you don't. It's that simple and that’s the pitch. If you want me to recruit, that's the recruiting pitch. Pittsburgh Steelers. If you want to be part of it, so be it. If you don't, no skin off my back. I just want to play football. I'm tired of talking about the quarterback situation. I'd rather have it done. I don't know what ends up happening. I'm ready to move on in free agency. Too much going on.”
Suddenly, Heyward claims he was “misconstrued” by the questioner. Oh, really?
“I was asked a question: ‘Would you go to the lengths of going to a darkness retreat to recruit Aaron Rodgers.’ I said, ‘I’m not doing that. The pitch is, if you want to be a Steeler, be a Steeler.’ That's all it was. It wasn't that I don't like Aaron Rodgers or I'm against it,” Heyward said Wednesday on the NFL Network. “When I look at our team, it would be really cool to have a guy like Aaron Rodgers. But I can't be the guy who gets it over the finish line. He's got to make those decisions himself. I'm excited to see what happens.”
In Minnesota, Vikings general manager Kwesi Adofo-Mensah said McCarthy’s ascent is “the outcome we want” and “the outcome we’re headed toward.” The No. 10 draft pick last year is the starter for Kevin O’Connell. “At every checkpoint, whether it been the draft process or practice until the injury and really the offseason now, he's met the bar,” Adofo-Mensah said. “He's exceeded our expectations at every point. So I don't have the ability to tell you what the future is, but I can tell you what I expect to be the outcome this offseason from the competition. But it's also our job to set up a quarterback room that's going to have to ... provide insurance in case somebody needs to come in for a couple of games. And that's our job as a personnel department to look at all the options out there and make sure we're setting ourselves up for the best case we can.”
Aaron Rodgers is not “insurance.” He will not wait for a rare exception. “For me to sit here and say that anything's 100 percent forever, that's just not the job,” Adofo-Mensah said. “So obviously things can change, but right now we're really happy with our room.”
Eat a pierogi. Try french fries inside a stuffed sandwich. Down two brews on the South Side. Become a yinzer, Aaron. Become one of the Pittsburghers, knowing you lived in friggin’ Green Bay for 18 seasons.
Or please leave us alone.
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Jay Mariotti, called “without question the most impacting Chicago sportswriter of the past quarter-century,’’ writes general sports columns for Substack while appearing on some of the 1,678,498 podcasts and shows in production today. He is an accomplished columnist, TV panelist and talk/podcast host. Living in Los Angeles, he gravitated by osmosis to film projects.