DK’s Daily Shot of Steelers: Aaron Rodgers’ time?

DK’s Daily Shot of Steelers: Aaron Rodgers’ time?

[Music] I can make this really simple or really complicated. So, I’m probably going to do a little bit of both. Actually, if Aaron Rodgers were to be precisely the quarterback that he was in New Jersey, then your favorite football team would be benefiting from the best quarterbacking that it’s seen post Ben Rothllessberger. Dot dot dot. Good morning to you. Good Monday morning. Good quarterback Monday. This is Daily Shot of Steelers. It comes your way bright and early every weekday. If you’re into hockey and/or baseball, I also offer daily shots. The other two teams in town that I cover, the Penguins and the Pirates. Hope you’ll check those out as well. There are now 9 days until players are required to report to Saint Vincent College. 10 days before they take to Chucknull Field for the first full practice of the summer. There are lots and lots and lots of questions to be answered out there. One of them you would think would not be how the quarterback entering his 21st NFL season might fare. But if we’re being fair, if we’re being open-minded, we’re going to look at a lot of different factors. First, the simplest of them, 2023, obviously Rogers missed with the Achilles injury. So, the only real season that he had with the other Jets was 2024. He started all 17 games. I’ve been over this, but he was anything but healthy through those 17, but nonetheless, he toughed through whatever was wrong with him and went out there and got the job done. Well, got the job done in perspective. The team stunk, but from his own perspective, he completed 63% of his passes. His career average is 65.1, so not that far off. He threw for 3,897 yards. In his Green Bay heydays, he was generally sitting above 4,000, as high as 4,434. [Music] So here again, being at 3,900, not exactly some massive drop off. He threw for 28 touchdowns and that number was actually a lot more in line with his career norm except for the insane 2020 that he had with the Packers when he threw 48 touchdowns against five interceptions which is just it I’m sorry that’s just close to unfathomable. And that ratio last season was 28 touchdowns to 11 interceptions. still very very good. And in all of these cases, my friends, all of them, including the 90.5 quarterback rating, all of them would have represented the Steelers best performance of the postben era, at least among anybody who got themselves, you know, more than a half dozen starts. Like for example, Mason Rudolph had a higher rating, but we’re talking about three regular season games. hardly some representative sample. Now, from there, I’m going to throw a couple other numbers out at you. Rogers was sacked 40 times last season. You heard me correctly, 40. And that was at the age of 40. Now, if you want some perspective on that and what it says about the other Jets offensive line, consider that the Steelers of 2024 between their two quarterbacks, Russell Wilson and Justin Fields, gave up 49 sacks, which is obviously even worse, but comes with, I think, something of a special asterisk attached in that Wilson alone was sacked 33 times in 11 games. three times per game in large part because he just refused to let go of the ball. And then once people were pursuing him, he was pretending that he was 10 years younger. So he became the easiest of all targets. Whereas compared to Rogers, Rogers finished the season with the fastest release time in the NFL and wasn’t timid about just throwing the ball away when it needed to be thrown away. What’s that mean for Rogers transition to the Steelers? Um, I have no idea. I don’t know anybody could because as we keep saying on this program and pretty much everywhere around town, all of this is going to depend on the offensive line anyway. Is Brick Jones more comfortable being back on the left side? Is Troy Fanano going to be an improvement at right tackle? Can they all stay healthy? Can they all continue progressing? No idea. None. Making no predictions here either. However, the path that I just laid out for you does at least allow for the possibility that this might go a little bit more smoothly for Rogers here than it did there. Maybe here’s another variable. The other Jets had an offense that overall was way worse than the Steelers. You can go about that in a collective sense. You can go about that just by looking at who Rogers supporting cast was. First off, he had almost no running game. Bree Hall was the headlining back. 876 yards for the season. Dude had as many fumbles as he did touchdowns, five each. Six total rushing plays of 20 plus yards all season. Garrett Wilson’s a nice receiver, which is why he’d get targeted 154 times. He caught 101 of those for,4 yards. An older, far less dynamic Devonte Adams was the number two target. Each of them ended up with seven touchdowns. Tyler Conklin was the top tight end with 51 catches. I I I could do this all day. You get the idea. I’d say that it doesn’t require even a shred of research, much less bias, to see that the Steelers offense, though it has its own lingering question marks, especially up front, is going to present Rogers with an opportunity to be better than he was in 2024. And to restate the point, he was a lot better in 2024 than anybody the Steelers have had in some time. Now, what’s the swing vote in all of this? Well, it’s the same point I’ve been making all summer long, including before Rogers signed, and that’s one never knows when the end comes or how it comes. If there’s a performance drop off as a result of age, as we’ve talked about on this show many times, it can come bang like that. It happened to Hines Ward. It happened to an extent to Troy Palamalo. Happened to Jerome Bettis. It happens to the best of the best of the best. And it is not often gradual. There’s also the injury factor which undoubtedly gets elevated with age. But my broadest point here today is if you’re bold enough to believe that Rogers can withstand those things I just mentioned, all that human stuff. Yes, he could be in for a bigger year than the one he just had. And the one he just had, considering his circumstances, was pretty good. We come back. J1Q Luxembourg Garbet Kelly and George is a personal injury law firm in Western Pennsylvania that represents injured people in automobile accidents, workers compensation cases, and medical malpractice claims. The attorneys at Luxembourg Garbage Kelly and George pride themselves in doing what they say they’re going to do. It’s important to them that when they make you a promise, they keep that promise. And this law firm has been keeping promises for over 80 years. Luxembourg Garbet Kelly and George has been AV rated. That’s the highest rating a law firm can receive for legal ability and ethics. And the lawyers at the firm have been designated super lawyers. That’s a real thing for over 15 years. Rare combination there. Luxembourg, Garbet, Kelly, and George has offices in Cranberry, Newcastle, Beaver Falls, Butler, and Elwood City. Learn more about them at lgk.com or by calling 888842-5454. Again, that’s 888842-5454. [Music] And today’s J1Q comes from Tommy in Scranton who says, “PK, I know you mentioned Justin Simmons is not the main answer for the long-term Steelers success, but you did say that he could be a guy for the year where all things can be equal. In that case, shouldn’t the Steelers pursue someone like Tyler Boyd for this year, not the future, to become a Steeler and fulfill the WR2 role? went to college at Pit and has a great relationship with Mike Tomlin. I feel like this could bring more weapons for Rogers and spark even more motivation going into this season. Anybody who doesn’t know of Tyler’s background beyond what Tommy just mentioned, Tyler is also from Claritton. So, he’s as local as local gets, except for the handful of seasons that he had to spend in Cincinnati and then this past season in Nashville. Tyler will turn 31 in mid November and he’s coming off his least productive season in the league with the Titans. He was in 16 games, caught 39 passes out of 57 targets, 390 yards, no touchdowns, but he did catch 20 passes for first downs. And he’s always been good at that. usually in the 40 or 50 range going back to his time with the Bengals. Now, I’ll betray a little bit of bias here because I’ve known Tyler and people close to Tyler for a long time. I covered Tyler when he was a Clarit and Bear. I covered Tyler when he was a Pit Panther. And yeah, naturally, I covered him when he was a Cincinnati Bengal at least twice a year. I saw Tyler do things when he was growing up and then even into his college days that had my eyes pop out of my skull. I I I thought this was just an extraordinary talent. And I don’t take any of that back. He found himself a niche that worked for him with the Bengals. The Bengals still brought along all these other superstars and Jamar Chasees and T. Higgins and so forth. And Tyler found his role in that offense, fought for his role, and sustained his role. You won’t find a negative syllable to be spoken about Tyler. For me, that said, as I was saying in the opening segment about how the endings come, the endings tend to come at different ages for different positions for what I would hope would be obvious reasons. The only thing that’s ever held Tyler back, if you can say that he’s been held back, has been that he didn’t have that elite all universe speed. Tyler could catch a football. Tyler could do incredible things athletically. When you’re talking about best on best speed, not so much. So, if that was going to be the first thing to go, that was going to be the wrong first thing to go. Now, I’m not going to pretend to be an expert on what he looked like for the Titans last year. The numbers aren’t exactly overwhelming. I do know that the Steelers, more than anybody, would have a book on Tyler. Well, more than anybody except the Bengals, but heck, maybe even more than that, going back to his childhood and character and everything else. But they’ve also got more than one connection with the Titans. And one of the Steelers current quarterbacks was a quarterback with the Titans last season. That of course being Mason Rudolph. So they have lots of different people that they could ask about. I’m not even suggesting that they have and for Tyler’s name to never even come up. uh for him not to get a visit. Whereas, for example, you’ve already seen Gabe Davis get a visit. I’m not feeling that it’s going to happen. And if I had to go the extra length here and explain why potentially it would be, and I keep bringing this up here, stop thinking of this as WR2. Think of it as WRB or 1B, meaning whoever it is that’s got to back up or replace DK Medaf if Medaf were to go down. That is a tall order both literally and figuratively. So, I would want someone who’s been in that one spot, someone who’s had that role, someone who’s run in those footsteps, and that’s not Tyler. If you’re familiar with what he’s handled positionally, the Steelers already have quite a bit of that at hand. I appreciate the question. I appreciate everybody listening to Daily Shot of Steelers. Don’t forget, today 400 p.m. Eastern, we have a double shot of Steelers coming your way. That’s live on our YouTube channel as well as on our own app and website at DK Pittsburgh Sports. We’d love to have you there along with us. [Music]

Reviewing Aaron Rodgers’ time in New Jersey, does he still have it?

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