The Steelers are still waiting on Aaron Rodgers, and at this point the whole thing has settled into the kind of offseason standoff where nobody seems eager to force the issue publicly, even with the draft now sitting right around the corner.
Pittsburgh continues to give Rodgers time to decide whether he wants to play in 2026 and whether he wants that season to happen with the Steelers, according to comments made Tuesday by team president Art Rooney II.
The arrangement has left the franchise in a strange holding pattern as the NFL draft approaches, with one future Hall of Fame quarterback still thinking things over and one of the league’s proudest organizations trying not to look like it is standing outside the phone booth waiting for a call.
Rooney made it clear the Steelers are not slamming the table and demanding an answer by some artificial deadline, but he also acknowledged the obvious: the draft matters, the calendar matters, and the team cannot spend forever pretending all roster-building roads lead through one undecided veteran.
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“You know, we’re still kind of getting the same signals that we’ve been getting recently,” Rooney said Tuesday. “He’s, I would say, headed in our direction, and so that seems to be all signs are positive so far. I’d say we’ve gotten enough signals, real signals, that yes, he does want to come here, so I do think we may get word soon.”
That is about as close to optimism as you can get without an actual contract.
It also comes after Rodgers visited the Steelers’ facility on March 21 and left without a deal. Since then, the public posture has mostly been patience. Rooney said the organization wants to respect Rodgers’ process, even if that means living with some uncertainty while the draft board sharpens and the rest of the quarterback market keeps moving.
“We’re all kind of getting to the same point where I’d like to get some certainty, and I’m sure he would as well,” Rooney said. “We’re not putting a deadline on it, per se, but before too long, it’d be nice to know which direction we’re going to head.”
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That “which direction” part is where this gets more interesting for Pittsburgh.
The Steelers currently hold the No. 21 overall pick in next week’s draft, and Rooney said the team still is not ruling out taking a quarterback there even if Rodgers eventually signs. “I think we have to look at the quarterback position in the draft, because our situation this year and next year is you don’t know who the quarterback’s going to be, frankly,” Rooney said. “So I think we have to be looking at the position and seeing if there’s somebody in the draft that makes sense.”
That line probably says more about Pittsburgh’s actual thinking than anything else in the story. Even if Rodgers does arrive, the Steelers are acting like a team that knows this would be a short-term patch, not some grand long-range solution. Mason Rudolph is currently the only quarterback on the roster with meaningful NFL experience, and even a Rodgers signing would not erase the bigger reality that the position remains unsettled beyond this season.
Rooney also addressed the idea of simply waiting until 2027 to solve that part of the problem, and he did not sound interested in punting the decision that far down the road. “Not necessarily,” Rooney said when asked whether the Steelers could go into next season with a veteran and then look for a quarterback in the 2027 draft. “Again, it depends on how the draft falls this year. If there’s somebody that we think is worth taking, and that can be our future quarterback, I wouldn’t rule that out.”
That leaves Pittsburgh in a very familiar NFL spot: publicly calm, privately juggling several outcomes at once.
The signs, according to Rooney, remain positive. But the draft is coming, and with it comes the part of the calendar where “we’ll see” stops sounding patient and starts sounding risky. Pittsburgh may still get its answer from Rodgers. It just cannot afford to act like that is the only answer available.
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