The Pittsburgh Steelers made Aaron Rodgers their top priority this offseason, but they don’t expect him to play to the same MVP level he has so many times before. That’s not a hot take, with Rodgers turning 42 late in the regular season. However, former NFL quarterback Tim Hasselbeck does think Rodgers has some gas left in the tank.
“They just need to get good, solid, consistent quarterback play,” Hasselbeck said on ESPN’s NFL Live on Tuesday. “Does he [Rodgers] need to be an MVP candidate? No. But can Aaron Rodgers have a season where he throws 30 touchdowns and five interceptions? He’s absolutely capable of that. And if you can get that type of production, don’t put your defense in a bad spot, Pittsburgh can be pretty dangerous.”
For the top quarterbacks in the league, 30 touchdowns isn’t the hardest number to get to. Aaron Rodgers has done it eight times himself. However, he’s also at a much different point in his career. He hasn’t hit that mark since he threw 37 in 2021, the year he won his fourth MVP award.
It’s hard to project his stats based on last year, with his 2024 season being a tale of two different stories. Last year, Rodgers did come close, throwing 28 touchdowns, but even then, he got off to a slow start as he struggled to recover from his Achilles injury. From Week 8 to the end of the season, Rodgers threw 18 touchdowns. If he could keep that pace over the course of a full season, one would think Rodgers could hit 30 in 2025.
There’s reason to believe that might happen. He looked much more comfortable during that second half of the year. During that same stretch, starting in Week 8, Aaron Rodgers finished six games with a passer rating over 100. He topped that total just once during the first seven games.
As for interceptions, that’s not a huge worry. Rodgers has an incredibly good career interception rate, throwing one on just 1.4 percent of his attempts. His mental processing and arm talent help him limit mistakes there. That said, he will need to do better than he has recently. In his last two full seasons, 2022 and 2024, Rodgers threw 12 and 11 interceptions, respectively.
At the end of the day, whether Aaron Rodgers reaches these numbers or not will have much to do with the offense around him. He has DK Metcalf, but players like Calvin Austin III and Roman Wilson will each need to step up. If that happens, and the Steelers can establish a run game while keeping Rodgers upright, stats like this could be in reach.