took a very deep dive <\/a>into the relationship between Rodgers and McCarthy, who was fired late in the 2018 season.<\/p>\n\u201cMike has a low football IQ, and that used to always bother Aaron,\u201d an unnamed source told Dunne at the time. \u201cHe\u2019d say Mike has one of the lowest IQs, if not the lowest IQ, of any coach he\u2019s ever had.\u201d<\/p>\n
Could a second act work, for a year? Rodgers would have to want it. McCarthy would have to want it. The chances of both wanting it seem, given the full history, slim.<\/p>\n
Still, the Steelers need to be smart with this one. Don\u2019t bring Rodgers in and tell him it\u2019s over; that\u2019s where the Jets erred last year. Let Rodgers make up his own mind, with the understanding that they need to know what he wants to do by the start of free agency.<\/p>\n
Even if Rodgers doesn\u2019t want to stay (he likely didn\u2019t want to stay with the Jets in 2025), he\u2019ll seize any opportunity to air grievances and\/or paint himself with the broad brush of victimhood. McCarthy needs to take the high road, biding his time until Rodgers decides to move on. Either by giving them a clear answer before March 11, or by giving them no answer and forcing them to make other arrangements.<\/p>\n
Still, it won\u2019t be a surprise if Rodgers tries to play a game of P.R. chess with McCarthy and the Steelers. Either because Rodgers can, or because Rodgers hopes to stick it one last time to the guy who didn\u2019t draft him, 21 years ago.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The relationship between incoming Steelers coach Mike McCarthy and current (for now) Steelers quarterback Aaron Rodgers didn\u2019t begin…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":429091,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[63],"tags":[349,99],"class_list":["post-429090","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nfl","tag-nfl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/429090","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=429090"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/429090\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/429091"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=429090"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=429090"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=429090"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}