It felt like a new day in Pittsburgh when head coach Mike Tomlin resigned in January, putting a period on 19 seasons with the Steelers. Tomlin famously never had a losing year with the club, and made it to the playoffs 13 times.
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But since then, the Steelers have recycled some old ideas. Mike McCarthy, 62, was introduced as the new head coach. And now veteran Aaron Rodgers, 42, is returning for another year at QB. We’ve seen this movie before. The Steelers new theme is “Pack to the Future.”
Rodgers is merely a fantasy fill-in at this stage of his career. He finished 18th in cumulative QB points last season, a residual of playing 16 games. If you switch to a per-game list, Rodgers tumbles down to 28th. He had just four weekly finishes inside the top 10, and he didn’t top 300 passing yards in any game.
Rodgers and McCarthy have an extended history, of course. McCarthy was Green Bay’s head coach for 13 years, and Rodgers was the starting quarterback for 11 of those seasons. Rodgers built a Hall of Fame résumé on the McCarthy playbook, winning two MVP awards together (he also won two after McCarthy left) and finishing as fantasy’s best quarterback four separate times.
McCarthy’s body of work deserves respect. He’s won 60% of his games as a head coach, and even his five-year hitch in Dallas had three playoff seasons. Dallas was second in passing yards in 2021 and third in passing yards in 2023, with McCarthy and Dak Prescott meshing nicely. McCarthy has 24 years of experience as a head coach or offensive coordinator in the NFL. He knows how to matriculate the ball down the field.
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If the Steelers get back to the playoffs in 2026, it will probably be on the strength of the defense. Pittsburgh’s defensive DVOA has outranked its offensive DVOA in seven straight seasons. Rodgers no longer drives the bus for any franchise, he’s riding the bus. The Steelers probably will ask running backs Jaylen Warren and Rico Dowdle to be the key players on offense.
That doesn’t mean the Rodgers news is all bad for the passing game. For whatever Rodgers has left at this stage, he’s probably better than what Pittsburgh already had in the quarterback room — veteran Mason Rudolph and younger options Will Howard and Drew Allar. Howard was a sixth-round pick in 2025, Allar a third-round choice this April. If McCarthy can turn any of those guys into a legitimate NFL starter, maybe he’s truly an NFL genius.
Receivers DK Metcalf and Michael Pittman Jr. take on a little more floor with Rodgers, a known commodity. I don’t mind them as WR4s for fantasy, and Metcalf could creep into the WR3 conversation. Although Metcalf drew just 99 targets last year, he turned that into a 59-850-6 line, good for a WR20 finish on total points. He slides down to WR22 if you rank the wideouts on a per-game basis. At least Metcalf and Rodgers have already played a season together.
Pittman had a similar season in Indianapolis last year (80-784-5), although he saw 12 more targets than Metcalf did. The Colts offense was pretty fun for about three months until Daniel Jones got hurt. Metcalf and Pittman figure to dominate a narrow passing tree; rookie second-round pick Germie Bernard is currently third on the depth chart. Pat Freiermuth also returns as a low-ceiling tight end.
I’m not going to be proactive with anything in the Pittsburgh passing game, but this shouldn’t be a dumpster fire, either. I’d prefer to draft Metcalf and Pittman as solid backups, not guys I’d roll with in Week 1. Freiermuth is a tight-end streamer at best, and Rodgers probably belongs in the streamer file, too.