{"id":683221,"date":"2026-05-21T02:13:10","date_gmt":"2026-05-21T02:13:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/683221\/"},"modified":"2026-05-21T02:13:10","modified_gmt":"2026-05-21T02:13:10","slug":"aaron-rodgers-breaks-silence-on-decision-to-return-to-steelers-for-2026-nfl-season","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/683221\/","title":{"rendered":"Aaron Rodgers breaks silence on decision to return to Steelers for 2026 NFL season"},"content":{"rendered":"

Aaron Rodgers breaks silence on decision to return to Steelers for 2026 NFL season<\/a> originally appeared on The Sporting News<\/a>. Add The Sporting News as a Preferred Source by clicking here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Aaron Rodgers is back with the Pittsburgh Steelers<\/a> for one last ride.<\/p>\n

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After keeping the Steelers in suspense for several months, Rodgers finally signed a one-year deal with the team for the 2026 season.<\/p>\n

In his first public comments since signing, Rodgers provided some insight<\/a> into his decision to return to the team, and how new head coach Mike McCarthy factored into that decision.<\/p>\n

Rodgers played for McCarthy for well over a decade with the Green Bay Packers<\/a> and the two experienced some serious success together, including a victory in Super Bowl XLV, ironically over the Steelers.<\/p>\n

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“When [Mike Tomlin] said he was stepping away, that was an emotional moment just because we all love him so much and care about him, and I thought that was probably it for me in Pittsburgh,” Rodgers said. “But when the decision was made to hire Mike [McCarthy], I started opening my mind back up to coming back.”<\/p>\n

Aaron Rodgers is very excited about being reunited with Mike McCarthy<\/p>\n

Rodgers said that he encouraged Steelers general manager\u00a0Omar Khan to look into McCarthy as a potential replacement for Tomlin, and the potential to play for McCarthy again certainly factored into Rodgers’ decision.<\/p>\n

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“I encouraged him for an outside perspective to interview Mike. Not thinking that he even would, honestly, just because the way the league goes and the trend, it’s kind of like whoever worked with Sean [McVay], Kyle [Shanahan] or one of those guys, Matt [LaFleur] now gets a lot of looks and multiple guys in those trees have,” Rodgers said.<\/p>\n

“But then when it became more serious, I was thinking, ‘Wow, that’d be a really interesting thought to come back and play with Mike.'”<\/p>\n

Rodgers acknowledged that he had doubts about returning for another season at 42 years old, but conversations with McCarthy after he was hired helped push him back to Pittsburgh.<\/p>\n

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“There was some doubt for sure,” Rodgers said. “But I had good conversations with Mike going back to when he was hired. It was nice to come back. I mean, it felt different than last year because I knew some of the guys and some of the people that work here and stuff, so it felt good coming in.”<\/p>\n

Rodgers fans should make sure to appreciate watching him while they still can, because he made it clear that 2026 will be his final year in the NFL.<\/p>\n

“Yes,” Rodgers said. “This is it.”<\/p>\n

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More NFL news:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Aaron Rodgers breaks silence on decision to return to Steelers for 2026 NFL season originally appeared on The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":683222,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[436],"tags":[1754,49,48,1730,167904,35309,514,949,82],"class_list":["post-683221","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nfl","tag-aaron-rodgers","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-green-bay-packers","tag-mike-mccarthy","tag-mike-tomlin","tag-nfl","tag-pittsburgh-steelers","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/683221","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=683221"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/683221\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/683222"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=683221"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=683221"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=683221"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}