Returning to the playoffs after four years away is enjoyable for Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Aaron Rodgers, but so, too, was silencing coach Mike Tomlin’s loudest critics along the way.
The one-time Super Bowl MVP hasn’t played in a postseason game since the 2021 season, but the longest playoff drought of his 21-year career will end Monday night when the Steelers host the Houston Texans in a wild-card game at Acrisure Stadium.
“It feels good to be back,” Rodgers said Thursday at UPMC Rooney Sports Complex. “That’s why you play. You want to play meaningful football late in the season. We put ourselves in that position. I think some of it is embracing the way the season has gone.”
Specifically, Rodgers pointed to when the Steelers were 6-6, and how they’ve responded since.
The low point of the season followed the team’s 26-7 loss to the Buffalo Bills in late November, a home game punctuated by chants of “Fire Tomlin” from the fans. Yet the Steelers ultimately won four of their final five games, including a playoff-clinching victory over the Baltimore Ravens in the regular-season finale.
That succeeded in silencing the chants.
“At 6-6, there were a lot of people thinking we were going to be kind of stumbling to the finish, and who knows what was going to happen,” Rodgers said. “A lot of you probably in this (media) group either publicly or privately were talking about Mike T getting axed. So it feels good to shut all those comments down.
“Clean the slate now. Anybody can make a run. It’s the hottest team. We’ve won four out of five. We’re playing a lot better football than we were earlier in the season. I like our chances.”
Rodgers’ latest playoff start was in January 2022, when the top-seeded Green Bay Packers lost 13-10 to the San Francisco 49ers in a divisional-round game. The Packers missed the playoffs the following season and then traded Rodgers to the New York Jets, where he spent the past two years without a postseason game.
He’ll be asked Monday to snap the Steelers’ nine-year playoff drought and end the franchise’s streak of six consecutive postseason losses. The team hasn’t won a playoff game since 2016, and those postseason losses have earned Tomlin his share of critics, despite never having had a losing regular-season record.
Rodgers dismissed those critics and critics in general.
“There’s always going to be something,” Rodgers said. “When I was a young player, they said I couldn’t be considered elite until I won a playoff game. And after that it was until you win a Super Bowl. And, oh, you haven’t won MVP yet.
“For whatever it might be for Mike T, he’s had, what, 19 straight non-losing seasons? So they’ve got to find something to try to get after him. Mike T is probably like me, though. Doesn’t give a whole lot of (expletive) about those comments. It is nice (to silence his critics) because we all love him and want to play for him and want to win for him.”
Rodgers, who signed with the Steelers in June as a free agent, was complimentary of his time in Pittsburgh and especially of Tomlin. He credited Tomlin for allowing players to be themselves, calling that trait an important part of team chemistry and a healthy locker room.
“One thing I really love, and it’s kind of the antithesis of where I was, is there’s not really any leaks in the boat,” Rodgers said. “Every year you have difficulties and adversities, both on the field and off the field. To go through a season like this and to be able to focus on football and not have a lot of other little (expletive) out there has been really nice.”
Rodgers made clear that his motivation to win Monday night is his personal desire to win, not ending the Steelers’ postseason slump or continuing to silence Tomlin’s critics. Besides, he said, that second part — keeping critics quiet — probably isn’t possible.
“I don’t think there’s any way to keep those people silent,” he said. “I think that’s the nature of sports media and the knee-jerk reaction of our society with social media.”
