Steelers Can Leave Rodgers at Altar With Trade

Aaron Rodgers hasn’t spent a day in a Pittsburgh Steelers uniform, and the honeymoon stage has already come and gone.

Rodgers surely has some valid reasons not to sign with the Steelers, or anyone else, this offseason. He won’t be favored to make a deep playoff run, wherever he lands. He may be pulled from the game by off-the-field matters that are important to him. It might just be time for Rodgers to retire, and that’s okay.

But at some point, Pittsburgh has to pivot. The promise of Rodgers and the likelihood of him fulfilling lofty expectations on the wrong side of 40 cannot be greater than the reality the Steelers face. They don’t have a starting quarterback, and they are running out of time to find one.

Pittsburgh’s offseason workouts start on April 21. The first round of the 2025 NFL Draft is just three days later. This situation has grown untenable, and this team can ill afford to let a free agent, who may not want to play, dictate the terms of the upcoming season.

The Steelers can pivot to the obvious trade candidate of Atlanta Falcons quarterback Kirk Cousins as Rodgers continues to stall.

It wouldn’t be pretty, or inspiring, or boost Pittsburgh’s chances all that much in a conference with titans under center. But Cousins, for most of the year, was fine in 2024, and the Steelers are striving for competency under center. He just has to do enough to get them back to the playoffs, and if his late-season plunge was the result of a shoulder injury and not Father Time, there’s reason to believe he can deliver.

Pittsburgh won’t have to pay an exorbitant amount, either. Sure, there’s some leverage involved for Atlanta to exploit. But Cousins would prefer to play somewhere else, and the Steelers are one of the few teams that can eat the vast majority, if not all, of the $27.5 million cap hit Cousins has.

A trade may have to wait for June 1 anyway because of the dead cap ramifications on his contract, but having a deal agreed to and stored away for the summer is better than hanging on the whims of an unsteady quarterback looking to announce his next move on ESPN.

Cousins and Rodgers aren’t meaningfully different players at this point in their careers, and they don’t have a significant disparity in their impact on Pittsburgh's playoff hopes. For a reasonable price, the Steelers are running out of reasons not to trade for Cousins.