Last week, the NFL officially released its 2025 schedule. For the Pittsburgh Steelers, there are obviously a few key storylines. One of them is Aaron Rodgers, who seems likely to sign with the team but hasn\u2019t put pen to paper yet. In Week 8, the Steelers-Packers matchup is set for Sunday night.<\/p>\n
Although Rodgers isn\u2019t on the Steelers roster, former Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger thinks the league had him in mind when making the schedule, especially that Steelers-Packers game.<\/p>\n
\u201cPackers at Steelers, that is the Sunday-nighter,\u201d Roethlisberger said on Tuesday\u2019s episode of his Footbahlin podcast<\/a>. \u201cI know the league came out and said it had nothing to do with Aaron Rodgers, more about Mike Tomlin. I disagree with them, I think they\u2019re lying. They want Aaron to be in that game, obviously.\u201d<\/p>\n Roethlisberger is referring to a statement made last week from Mike North, the NFL\u2019s VP of Broadcast Planning and Scheduling. H<\/a>e mentioned that the Steelers\u2019 schedule<\/a> is \u2018Built for Coach Tomlin.\u2019<\/p>\n That could be true. No matter who their quarterback is, the Steelers have remained one of the more iconic franchises in all of American sports. They\u2019re going to get their share of primetime games every year.<\/p>\n Looking at the schedule, though, it\u2019s hard not to wonder whether Rodgers\u2019 potential arrival could have played into the league\u2019s thinking. Sure, the Steelers and Packers could have been in the Sunday night game anyway, given how historic both franchises are. Still, putting Rodgers\u2019 former team against his new team in a standalone, primetime matchup would be excellent for all parties.<\/p>\n The Packers aren\u2019t the only matchup on the Steelers\u2019 slate that plays into that theory, either. Pittsburgh opens up its season on the road against the New York Jets. Having Rodgers play his most recent team, against a quarterback in Justin Fields who is also playing his former team to open the season, makes a ton of sense. Putting the Jets and Steelers on the first Sunday of the season feels like something the league would have done if they expected<\/a> Rodgers to sign with Pittsburgh.<\/p>\n That game really could be a revenge game for both parties. Fields hasn\u2019t said anything negative about Pittsburgh since leaving town. However, he\u2019d probably be happy to stick it to the team that clearly valued him less than New York did this offseason. Rodgers has also been outspoken about his displeasure with how his time ended with the Jets. There would be plenty of motivation for him as well<\/a>.<\/p>\n Again, the Steelers being in the spotlight is nothing new. And North could very well be telling the truth that they built the schedule for Tomlin after all. The way those two matchups are scheduled is interesting, though. It\u2019s hard to think the league doesn\u2019t want to play into the Rodgers aspect of each game.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Last week, the NFL officially released its 2025 schedule. For the Pittsburgh Steelers, there are obviously a few…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":66380,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2072],"tags":[1586,6594,6595,7,41,345,2514,2513,1255,6,428],"class_list":{"0":"post-66379","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-green-bay-packers","8":"tag-aaron-rodgers","9":"tag-ben-roethlisberger","10":"tag-footbahlin-with-ben-roethlisberger","11":"tag-football","12":"tag-green-bay","13":"tag-green-bay-packers","14":"tag-greenbay","15":"tag-greenbaypackers","16":"tag-mike-tomlin","17":"tag-nfl","18":"tag-packers"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/114543337564123547","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66379","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=66379"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66379\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/66380"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=66379"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=66379"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=66379"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}