LATROBE, Pa. (AP) — Aaron Rodgers says there's “zero debate" that this season will be his last.
The future Hall of Fame quarterback's status beyond 2026 is seemingly one of the few certainties for the Pittsburgh Steelers, where the only thing familiar about their annual pilgrimage to Saint Vincent College for training camp might be the venue.
Having a new head coach for the first time in a generation will do that.
While native son Mike McCarthy's Pittsburgh
roots run deep, he also brings a career full of experiences built coaching elsewhere to a franchise that has done certain things a certain way for a long, long time.
Times are changing. Right from the jump.
The quaint spectacle of players being swarmed by cameras and microphones as they lugged their bags and personal items into Rooney Hall is no more. Most of the roster arrived quietly late Monday. Nearly all of them were on the field for a post-breakfast conditioning test on Tuesday, a glorified jog that was typically done in the late afternoon during former coach Mike Tomlin's 19-year run.
No wonder linebacker T.J. Watt likened the beginning of his 10th year in the NFL to the first day of school.
“There’s just a lot of unknown,” he said.
The next three weeks in the western Pennsylvania hills are a feeling-out process of sorts for players and coaches alike. Watt insists he is embracing the new.
Good thing, because there's plenty to go around.
The afternoon practices in the midsummer heat that Tomlin leaned into, often clad in black sweatpants and a sweatshirt, will now be held earlier in the day. Team meetings will start at 7:30 a.m., with all practices scheduled to wrap up by 1:30 p.m. at the latest, around the same time Tomlin's practices usually began.
McCarthy said he'd be fine with practicing right after breakfast if he could. And tackling? Well, that's mostly out, too.
“You try to reduce risk," said McCarthy, who said the emphasis will be on trying to make sure players correctly do all the fundamental things required for good tackling form — like footwork — so they'll be ready when the games count.
Still, McCarthy is well aware that trying to prevent all injuries is a fool's errand. If he needed a reminder, he got one when veteran defensive back Jalen Ramsey tweaked a knee during minicamp, a setback that landed him on the physically unable to perform list, though McCarthy stressed the move was precautionary and that Ramsey is expected back in a couple of weeks.
A little more uncertain is the status of cornerback Joey Porter Jr. The club placed him on the PUP list on Tuesday but offered no details. The timing comes with Porter angling for a new contract as he enters the final year of the rookie deal he signed in 2023 after Pittsburgh selected him with the first pick of the second round.
Porter held himself out of certain team drills during minicamp in June in an effort to protect his health, saying at the time that he feels like he's one of the elite players at his position in the league.
While the Steelers have signed Porter's draft classmates tight end Darnell Washington and outside linebacker Nick Herbig to new contracts in recent months, general manager Omar Khan said there is nothing else “imminent.” Asked if he's concerned that the longer it takes to reach an agreement Porter, the more expensive it will get, Khan shrugged.
“It’s just the nature of the beast,” he said. “We understand where we are, and we have communication. We know how the process works. But at the end of the day, we can only go so far with certain negotiations and see where it goes.”
The one person Khan won't have to worry about negotiating with anymore is Rodgers. The four-time MVP said when he signed a one-year deal in May to return to Pittsburgh after leading the Steelers to an AFC North title last season that “this is it.”
Though wide receiver DK Metcalf tried to prop the door open for 2027 when he said he could see Rodgers running it back one more time if he had a great season, his QB quickly shut it.
“I thought last year might be it,” he said. “And then Mike got hired and I talked to the wife, and she said, ‘You can do one more year.’ So we'll see if it works out."
Rodgers likes the symmetry of ending his career with the coach he won a Super Bowl with during his long run in Green Bay. He's also one of the few people in the organization who have a sense of what — and more specifically how — McCarthy plans to build a team, though he pointed out that changes to the collective bargaining agreement that banned two-a-day practices add a bit of an unknown, even for someone who has seen just about everything.
“I’m not sure what the Mike McCarthy training camp practice will be like, but I know that the OTAs were crisp,” he said. “You guys saw them out there. It was crisp. Things were moving fast, in and out of team periods, and I expect more of the same.”
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