Steelers: Can McCarthy and Rodgers Actually Recreate What They Had in Green Bay?

Aaron Rodgers’ first season in Pittsburgh worked out better than a lot of people expected. He threw 24 touchdowns against just seven interceptions, led the Steelers to a division title, and got them a home playoff game.

Then the season ended the way Steelers seasons have ended for almost a decade now, a playoff loss, this time to Houston, and Mike Tomlin stepping away from the franchise entirely after the year was over.

So now the Steelers have a new head coach, and it’s not just any new head coach. It’s Mike McCarthy, the same man who coached Rodgers for thirteen years in Green Bay, won a Super Bowl with him, and helped mold him into a four-time MVP.

Rodgers has openly talked about how surreal it feels sitting in those meetings again, comparing it to being a 22-year-old kid back in his first year in Green Bay. It’s a genuinely great story. The question is whether it’s actually going to work on the field.

Here’s why I don’t think this is the slam dunk a lot of the feel-good coverage makes it sound like. Pittsburgh’s defense has been good enough to keep them competitive for years now, and with Patrick Graham running that side of the ball, I don’t expect that to change.

The defense isn’t the question mark heading into this season. It almost never is with this organization. The offense is everything here, and that’s where I think the real uncertainty lives.

McCarthy himself has said the 2026 offense will look more like what he ran during his five years with the Cowboys than the version Rodgers thrived in during their Green Bay peak. That’s worth pausing on.

People keep talking about this reunion like it’s a return to the exact system that made Rodgers a back-to-back MVP, but McCarthy is telling us directly that it won’t be. West Coast principles will carry over, sure, but the actual offense is going to be a different animal.

There’s also a real schematic mismatch worth talking about. McCarthy’s offenses have historically been built around quick, timed routes that attack zone coverage, not a heavy running back passing game.

Rodgers, on the other hand, has thrown to his running backs at a rate of 19.9% or higher in every one of his last six seasons. That’s not a small detail. If McCarthy’s system simply doesn’t feature the backs the way Rodgers is used to relying on, that’s a real adjustment for a 42-year-old quarterback who doesn’t have the scrambling ability anymore to create plays on his own the way he used to when things broke down.

And it’s not just me raising an eyebrow here. Pro Football Focus pointed out something I think gets glossed over in all the nostalgia: McCarthy’s success in Green Bay may have had more to do with Rodgers bailing out the offense with backyard improvisation than with McCarthy’s scheme actually creating easy throws.

If that’s true, then this reunion only works if McCarthy’s system in Pittsburgh does more heavy lifting than his old Green Bay system ever had to, at the exact moment Rodgers has less physical ability to cover for any shortcomings himself. Even reports out of OTAs have noted Rodgers admitting there’s a real learning curve, plays coming in that he wasn’t immediately sure how to run. That’s not nothing for a future Hall of Famer in what’s expected to be his final season.

So here’s where I land on this. Pittsburgh scored 23.4 points per game last season, good for 15th in the league, which is honestly fine, not great, not a disaster. McCarthy reportedly wants to get to around 55 offensive touches a game and has made clear he’s calling the plays himself, no shared duties with his offensive coordinator.

If this offense clicks, and Pittsburgh cracks the top ten in scoring, I think this team is a real threat in the AFC, because the defense is already good enough to make every game competitive. If it doesn’t click, if the pace and pieces of this new system don’t actually mesh with what Rodgers does best at this stage of his career, I think we’re looking at a near-identical version of the team we already saw last year. Solid enough to make the playoffs. Not good enough to win a game once they get there.

The defense was never going to be Pittsburgh’s problem. It’s all on this offense now, and I’m not convinced the fit is as clean as the storybook version of this reunion wants us to believe.