The Pittsburgh Steelers, eager to cast off whatever traces of cultural relevance they once had, announced on Wednesday that they were willing to wait for quarterback Aaron Rodgers to help ease them into a quiet, lonely death.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m optimistic we can get a deal wrapped sometime within the next three to 100 days,\u201d said GM Omar Khan. Khan told reporters that he recognizes that the team\u2019s fans have been waiting a long time to become just as disaffected with the Steelers as they have been with the Pittsburgh Pirates. \u201cBut trust me, we\u2019re working on it,\u201d he said, offering the cameras a sly wink. \u201cJust give us a little longer.\u201d<\/p>\n
Team owner and president Art Rooney II seconded Khan\u2019s assurances. \u201cIt has long been the dream of both myself and the Rooney family to watch our beloved Steelers flop around like a fish for months on end, until they run out of oxygen and at last fall, deathly silent, into the afterlife, unnoticed and unloved.\u201d Rooney told the press he was \u201cdisappointed\u201d by the team\u2019s 2025 campaign, which included a number of \u201coverly ambitious throws downfield\u201d and \u201ca division title that none of us actually wanted to win.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cBut when Aaron comes back, we\u2019re confident he\u2019ll spend the entire season languishing in the pocket like a dead squirrel before dumping off a screen pass that travels exactly four yards sideways,\u201d Rooney said. The owner is confident that this new, even more dilapidated Rodgers will help the franchise reclaim its toilet days of the 1980s, when the team\u2019s on-field play was so ghastly that your grandfather fell headlong into a fatal case of alcoholism.<\/p>\n
New head coach Mike McCarthy\u2014hired by the franchise to so thoroughly disgust locals that they won\u2019t be even able to muster the energy to wave a Terrible Towel around in the air for any measurable length of time\u2014was even more emphatic about Rodgers\u2019s coming arrival.<\/p>\n
\u201cOh, he\u2019ll be here,\u201d said McCarthy, fielding questions while getting a vigorous calf massage<\/a> from a team staffer. \u201cI didn\u2019t take this job to get along with my players and win games in the postseason. I came here to render this entire organization spiritually comatose. Wait ’til I send Aaron out there to catch an option pass. You\u2019ll ask the first person you see to bury you alive.\u201d<\/p>\n When asked by reporters if he\u2019d mended fences with the quarterback after an apparent falling out when both men were with the Green Bay Packers, McCarthy replied, \u201cNot a lick. He still hates my guts, and I still think he\u2019s a pathetic little nancy boy. And you have my word that we\u2019ll never resolve our differences, and that we\u2019ll spend all of the coming season passive-aggressively lashing out at one another in the press.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cCan you move down to the toes now?\u201d he asked the staffer. \u201cThese little piggies need some TLC.\u201d<\/p>\n The Steelers, who beefed down their offense this offseason by adding RB Rico Dowdle and WR Michael Pittman Jr., have been waiting on Rodgers\u2019s decision ever since the team\u2019s 30-6 playoff drubbing at the hands of the Houston Texans in January, a loss that Rooney described as, \u201cSuitably forgettable, but still tragic in that it happened at all.\u201d<\/p>\n Rodgers, last seen headed to Steelers team headquarters<\/a> and then not<\/a>, has reportedly told friends that he\u2019s in \u201cthe most adequate shape of his life,\u201d and that he plans on returning to the team \u201conce I\u2019m off my meds.\u201d On Tuesday, the future Hall of Famer told ESPN host Pat McAfee that he\u2019s intrigued by the idea of becoming the \u201ctrue patient zero\u201d of a nationwide hantavirus outbreak, but that, \u201cI\u2019ve still got some horrible football left in me, brother.\u201d He added that while the hantavirus is, indeed, an effective spreader of death, such a quick and gruesome demise \u201creally isn\u2019t the Steeler Way,\u201d and that he\u2019d rather local fans die by falling into an inescapable depression after watching their quarterback spend another season failing to register a better PFF grade than Spencer Rattler.<\/p>\n The quarterback added that he\u2019s already had his wife Xmerelda craft a series of dolls of his would-be new teammate Pittman to burn in effigy.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t know what he\u2019s gonna do to piss me off, but it\u2019ll be something. I know that,\u201d Rodgers said.<\/p>\n In the event that Rodgers doesn\u2019t sign with the team, Steelers brass intends on staging a heated training camp battle for the starting quarterback job between second-year nobody Will Howard and tragically underwhelming rookie Drew Allar. Recent reports indicate that McCarthy has taken a special interest<\/a> in Allar, who suffered a season-ending ankle injury during his final season at Penn State.<\/p>\n \u201cHe\u2019s already got the gimpy leg,\u201d McCarthy said cheerily, adding that Allar also has a \u201cterrible work ethic\u201d and that \u201cwatching him needlessly throw 50 passes a game\u201d will prove equally stultifying to watching Rodgers, now so chronically ineffective that his mere visage triggers suicidal ideation in others.<\/p>\n But, the coach added, he doesn\u2019t think it will come to that.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen Aaron is ready to come in and get to whining like a maimed infant, we\u2019ll be ready. That\u2019s a promise.\u201d<\/p>\n Recommended