When Mike Tomlin first announced that he would be leaving the Pittsburgh Steelers, there was certainly no shortage of guesses about what the future might hold for the franchise. Most were intrigued about the direction the team would take.
Some felt that they would slide and become irrelevant after losing the most-winning head coach in history. Others suggested that they would prioritize hiring a more offensive-minded play caller this time around. But almost no one expected them to announce their successor within the same month.
On Saturday afternoon, the franchise confirmed that Mike McCarthy will become the fourth head coach in the Steelers’ history. This has set up the former Green Bay Packer for a potential reunion with his former quarterback, Aaron Rodgers. According to Skip Bayless, however, it’s pretty hard to be excited about a stale product.
“It’s a bad idea. It won’t work,” Bayless stated during the latest episode of his self-titled show on YouTube.
“Mike McCarthy and Aaron Rodgers did one great thing together long ago, in a galaxy far away, in Green Bay… I think they want [Rodgers] back, and I think he wants to go back, obviously now reuniting with Mike McCarthy… Aaron Rodgers is now washed up, but the Steelers can’t let him go,” he added.
Bayless then highlighted the various instances in which Rodgers reportedly lambasted his teammates both in the locker room and in the film room during the 2025 regular season. He then labelled the future NFL Hall of Famer as an “all-time blame deflecting, finger-pointing diva.”
Throw in the fact that Rodgers’ performance against the Houston Texans in the Wild Card round of the playoffs was an outright “disaster,” and Bayless does not doubt that Pittsburgh should have gone for a complete reset. In the eyes of the former Undisputed host, the franchise is all but bought in on the duo that was responsible for their defeat at Super Bowl XLV back in 2011.
However, it’s worth remembering that there’s no guarantee that Rodgers will stick around. Before the start of the campaign, the now-42-year-old signal caller famously remarked that he was “pretty sure” that the 2025 regular season would be the final one of his storied career. And Rodgers was reportedly sobbing and apologizing to Tomlin in the locker room following their loss to Houston. So there’s certainly enough here to suggest that his heart may just no longer be up for it.
For both Rodgers and the Steelers, there’s plenty of time to figure out the details. We still have another six months before talks of training camp begin to circulate.