The Pittsburgh Steelers signed Aaron Rodgers to lead their offense, and head coach Mike Tomlin is ready to get to work with the four-time NFL MVP under center. During a press conference after the team’s first mandatory minicamp practice, Tomlin said the reason the Steelers coveted Rodgers is simple.
“Read his resume. We’re excited about him being here, he’s excited about being here, but we’ll make no bold predictions. We’re just gonna roll our sleeves up and go to work and let our efforts do the talking,” Tomlin said Tuesday via video posted to the team’s Twitter account
While Pittsburgh practiced today, Rodgers, who officially signed over the weekend, only did individual work, and Tomlin said that was a decision made so rookie quarterback Will Howard didn’t lose any reps during an important developmental stage of his career.
“June reps are a heck of a lot more important for a guy like Will Howard at this stage in his career than the guy who’s been doing it for 20 years. And so whatever snaps he gets, you take away from a guy like Will Howard, and we’re trying to get this collective ready for training camp,” Tomlin said.
During his press conference today, Rodgers said there are still parts of the offense that he’s learning, and that Tomlin isn’t going to have him practice in full until he has the offense down.
“A lot of the stuff is stuff I’ve done before. But there’s some new terms, some new types of motion words and different stuff, so I’m learning, I’m gonna go through the individual stuff, that’s what Mike wants me to do. I told Mike, he wants me to practice, I’ll practice, but I think he said he just wants me to stick to the individual until I got the offense down,” Rodgers said via the team’s YouTube channel.
While he still needs to get the offense down, Rodgers is entering his 21st year in the league, and it’s not like he needs a whole lot of reps to get ready to go. The reps are more valuable to a rookie, and Rodgers can spend more time working on the terminology and getting acclimated to Arthur Smith’s offense.
Rodgers is certainly excited to work with Mike Tomlin, a coach he’s admired for a long time, and Rodgers’ resume includes four MVPs and a Super Bowl victory. For Tomlin, it’ll be the best quarterback he’s since Ben Roethlisberger retired. It could mean good things for the Steelers to have such an accomplished quarterback leading the charge, even if he might be a little bit slow to get going.
Come training camp, Rodgers should be a full go, and then we’ll really get a chance to see how he looks in the Black and Gold and working with his receivers. Come the regular season, we’ll know whether Tomlin’s excitement to bring aboard Rodgers is warranted and just how far Rodgers can take this team.
