The first Sunday of the 2025 regular season will indeed start with a bang.
The Steelers face the Jets. And the stakes will be high for both teams. It will be the first bit of evidence regarding both the question of whether the Jets were right to move on from quarterback Aaron Rodgers — and whether the Steelers were right to embrace him.
And it’s clear that Rodgers has strong feelings about the franchise with which he spent two seasons. Mark Schlereth recently said on his podcast that Rodgers had plenty to say about one very specific aspect of the team’s offense during Rodgers’s time there.
“Aaron and I had a conversation about when he was with the Jets was how abysmal their running game was and how schematically it made no sense,” Schlereth said, via Chris Ward of SteelersNew.com. “I started the conversation, and then Aaron went on for about a 25-minute diatribe on just their run game.”
If he’s capable of talking for 25 minutes about the team’s running game, how long could Rodgers go about owner Woody Johnson’s teenage sons making personnel recommendations based on Madden ratings?
It’s no surprise that Rodgers has strong feelings about the Jets. Beyond the dysfunction he witnessed (and spoke out about) while he was there, he has chastised the organization for having him fly across the country only to be told that they’re going in a different direction.
So, yeah, he’s going to want to beat the Jets. And, yeah, the Jets are going to want to beat him.
Making the first Sunday of the season even more interesting will be the efforts by the Jets to beef up their running game. Which, if effective, will extend drives and reduce the number of possessions and make it harder for Rodgers to even get on the field.
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