Rodgers Reunites With McCarthy in Pittsburgh for His 22nd and Final Season
Rodgers threw for 3,322 yards last year as the Steelers took the AFC North. At 42, he's chasing one last run — but the fantasy math is thin.
Streamer at best behind a shaky roster and thin weapons
- 3,322 pass yds, 24 TD, 7 INT in 2025 (16 games)
- Our rank: QB19, #42 overall for 2026
- Season passing O/U set at 3,050.5 yards
- Rodgers 24-27 as a starter since 2022
- Steelers O/U 8.5 wins; +166 to reach playoffs
Aaron Rodgers and Mike McCarthy are back in a huddle together for the first time since 2018, reunited in Pittsburgh 15 years after they won Super Bowl XLV in Green Bay. The 42-year-old won't suit up for tonight's preseason opener — he rarely does, and skipped exhibition action entirely last year — as he preserves his body for a 22nd and final NFL season. Mason Rudolph is expected to start and play a series or two before rookie Drew Allar and second-year Will Howard take over.
The stakes are real for the Steelers, if not for the reps tonight. Rodgers threw for 3,322 yards with 24 touchdowns and 7 picks across 16 games last season (2025), guiding Pittsburgh to an AFC North title that hinged on a missed kick by Baltimore's Justin Tucker in Week 18. Match that output in 2026 and Rodgers would land top-five all-time in passing yards by a Hall of Fame-bound QB in his final season — a list Tom Brady will eventually headline with 4,694 yards from his 2022 Tampa Bay swan song.
The History Isn't Just Trivia
When Rodgers takes the field in Week 1 against Atlanta, he and McCarthy will become the first head coach/QB pair to win a Super Bowl together and then start a game for a different team. The last time Pittsburgh tried something like this was 1958, when Buddy Parker traded for Bobby Layne and got a career-high 2,510 passing yards out of the reunion. Cute story. It doesn't put points on your fantasy board.
The Roster Around Him
Pittsburgh spent draft capital to pry Michael Pittman from the Colts — a receiver coming off 80 catches, 784 yards and a career-high 7 touchdowns — but both Pittman and DK Metcalf are nursing injuries and won't play tonight. Metcalf managed 59 grabs for 850 yards and 6 scores in 2025 (15 games), good for 187 PPR points and our WR25. That's a solid but unspectacular room for a quarterback who went 24-27 as a starter over the past three seasons.
The projections aren't kind either. Pittsburgh's win total sits at 8.5 (Over +120), and the model pegs them at 8.6 wins with a 40.4% playoff shot — a franchise that hasn't won a postseason game since 2016 and trailed by 21-plus in all seven straight losses since. Rodgers himself carries the longest streak ever of playoff appearances without a Super Bowl trip (10) as a starter.
The Fantasy Fallout
Our model ranks Rodgers QB19 (#42 overall) for 2026, and that's about right. He posted 227 PPR points last season and trended slightly up over his final five games (+1.6 vs. his season average), but the ceiling here is capped by a thin, banged-up receiving corps and a run-heavy McCarthy scheme. In one-QB leagues, leave him on the wire and stream matchups. In superflex, he's a fine QB2 with a low floor. Rudolph (17 PPR points across 5 games in 2025, our QB51) is waiver-wire filler only if Rodgers goes down.
