He's Not Coming Back Again, Is He?

The optimist sees the glass as half full. The pessimist sees the glass as half empty. The Steelers fan orders a double.

The 2025 season was a Steelers season like any other, only weirder: a madman’s meander to a familiar destination. There were familiar elements: grungy wins, narrow escapes, upsets of that far-superior-on-paper arch rival from Baltimore, a few diva moments. There were plot twists: bloody noses, punctured lungs, fights over racial slurs (though there’s nothing even all that new about those). But a first-round playoff drubbing at the end of a just-good-enough-to-squeak-in season? When have we seen that before? Oh yeah: 2024, 2023, 2021, 2020 …

Sure, Monday night’s 30-6 Texans victory over the Steelers was closer than the score. The Steelers defense forced a bunch of C.J. Stroud turnovers. Their offense idled down the field with the left directional blinking for some field goals. The Terrible Towels and yinzer howls rattled the Texans offense into some penalties, miscommunications and blown snaps. The Texans led just 7-6 at halftime. This was Steelers football at its finest, which looks suspiciously like Eagles football at its worst.

But Aaron Rodgers began performing tipsy jigs in the pocket after a second-quarter hit from Danielle Hunter. It was only a matter of time before Will Anderson and Sheldon Rankins made a Rodgers sandwich; Rankins ate his half in the end zone. The Steelers defense was too gassed from trying to be perfect for six years to make another stop. Rodgers turned into a pile of dust and blew away, taking another year of Steelers football with it.

The optimist sees the Steelers as a team that’s competitive every single week, always gives season ticket buyers their money’s worth and could have gone further this season with a break here and a break there. The pessimist sees institutional rot, a fanbase that has conditioned itself to settle for complacency and a head coach who has already gorged on a lifetime’s supply of breaks.

The Steelers’ vision was, understanably, a little cloudy after Monday night’s beating.

“I’m not gonna make any emotional decisions,” Aaron Rodgers said when asked about playing another season.

“I’ve answered this before,” he added. “Every game could be my final game.”

“I’m not even in that mindset as I sit here tonight,” Mike Tomlin said when asked a similar question. “I’m more in the mindset of what transpired in this stadium, and certainly what we did and didn’t do. Not a big-picture mentality as I sit here tonight.”

The Steelers’ immortals can suddenly sense their mortality. This one stung differently, didn’t it fellas?

The Tomlin debate has grown as dreary as his team. His Steelers are 0-6 in the playoffs since 2016. He has become Jeff Fisher with a better kicker. Franchises like the Patriots and Broncos have collapsed and rebuilt during his world-record water-treading routine. The cross-state Eagles have gone through two or three death-and-glorious-resurrection cycles, depending on how you count them.

An optimist envisions Drake Maye and Mike Vrabel – or perhaps C.J. Stroud and the more Steel Curtain-like Texans defense – when dreaming of a Steelers rebuild. A pessimist sees the Jets, even though the Steelers offered their fans a little glimpse of the Jets this year.

After two decades of Tomlin, many Steelers fans can only see the monsters scribbled into the blank margins of the map. Here be dragons. Yes, but maybe they will be your dragons. The Steelers organization, not their fans, needs the courage to sail past the horizon.

But Rodgers? His media surrogates have been signaling a 2026 return since he recovered from November’s left-wrist-and-shnozz injuries. More specifically, reports and rumors have Rodgers returning to the open arms of Tomlin and the Steelers. Veterans advocated for a Rodgers return after the game, though they may think differently when the adrenaline wears off and the quarterback is out of earshot.

Please, for the love of all that’s sacred, please don’t let this happen.

Rodgers was as effective in 2025 as any optimist could hope for: wily, quick-witted, lively-armed, somewhere within the normal range of human behavior. He was also as ineffective as any pessimist could have predicted: creaky, immobile, unwilling to take a hit, surly after losses.

Statistics, blind to our narratives and worldviews, ranked Rodgers 19th in DYAR and 22nd in Adjusted Net Yards per Attempt while running an offense with all the horsepower and transparent protective armor of the Popemobile. The Texans defense saw how limited Rodgers was and laughed the night away.

Rodgers’ 21st season was no farce. In fact, it could be framed as a worthy, reputation-polishing coda if he retires now. That was as glorious a blaze as he can possibly ignite at age 42. It doesn’t take a Rodgers-sized ego for a quarterback to believe that he has one more season like 2025 in him. It takes simple organizational competence for an NFL franchise not to want one, nor to take a chance on getting one that’s 10% worse.

Perhaps the Texans knocked some sense into Rodgers, whose retirement could then clunk some clarity into the Steelers, Three Stooges style. It should be back to the quarterback carousel for the Steelers. The team is five years past warranty anyway. Why not just trade everything in? The Ravens weren’t afraid to do it.

After a playoff blowout, an optimist writes a column praising the victor, while a pessimist writes one burying the loser. A realist (or opportunist, if there is really any difference) follows the story.

The Texans look like they could wipe the floor with the Patriots right now, pointspread be damned. They may end up in the Super Bowl. We could be swimming in Texans hosannas in the next few weeks.

But the Steelers? This could turn out to be the Rodgers and/or Tomlin eulogy. And while crusty old hacks like me might not all be pessimists, we’re dedicated grave dancers.

This long era of Steelers football deserves both praise and burial. And Steelers fans should think of Monday’s beating as a tarot reading: the Death card doesn’t signify anything truly fatal, merely the arrival of some healthy and natural change.