Aaron Rodgers already doesn’t have fans inside the Pittsburgh Steelers building.
While commenting on an Instagram post from NFL aggregator account @JPAFootball saying the Steelers are the betting favorites to land Rodgers this offseason, Pittsburgh safety DeShon Elliott dismissed the idea of Rodgers finding a home in the Steel City.
“Leave his ass at the retirement home,” Elliott said in a since-deleted comment on the post, pointed out by a Steelers fan X account.
The Instagram post noted DraftKings priced the Steelers as favorites to land the ex-Jet in their “Aaron Rodgers next team odds” market with +200 odds (33.33 percent chance implied).
The Jets told Rodgers that they were moving on from him this offseason after a face-to-face meeting with first-year coach Aaron Glenn in the offseason.
The strong comments from Elliott are a bit bizarre, considering the Steelers do not have either of their starting quarterbacks from 2024 under contract.
However, Elliott has a history of controversial social media posts with the team telling him to take down one earlier this season which referenced head coach Mike Tomlin as “Osama Bin Tomlin.”
Pittsburgh had previously expressed interest in bringing back one of Russell Wilson or Justin Fields, but unlikely both, according to owner Art Rooney II.
“I wouldn’t close the door, but I’d say it’s probably unlikely,” Rooney said at the beginning of the offseason. “I think both of them see themselves as starters and I don’t know that they want to share the same job again next year. So, I would say most likely we probably don’t wind up bringing them both back.”
Rooney added that he expects to sign one of them to a long-term deal but did not say whether either quarterback was preferred at this time, although the prevailing sentiment is that coach Mike Tomlin would prefer to have Wilson over Fields.
“I think my preference would probably be to have something more than a one-year in place next time around, but we’ll see what it takes,” Rooney said.
Rodgers, 41, is unlikely to fit that Steeler mold of a long-term deal, although he has expressed interest in returning to football in 2025.
Wilson, 36, struggled in the back half of the 2024 season, losing five straight spanning the end of the regular season and postseason.
Among other possible destinations for Rodgers include the Raiders and Titans, although it remains possible that he just retires.
