Aaron Rodgers is going back to Pittsburgh. Not as a new face — he was already there in 2025, won the AFC North, and led the Steelers to a 10-7 record with a torn wrist and a receiver room that would have made most quarterbacks cry. Now per ESPN’s Adam Schefter, he’s re-signing for up to $25 million on a one-year deal, nearly doubling his 2025 salary of $13.65 million. Pittsburgh rewarded a 42-year-old for doing the job.
That’s the Steelers’ calculation. For the Raiders, it’s a complication they didn’t plan for.
Schefter broke the news when it dropped:
Sources: Aaron Rodgers and the Steelers now have reached agreement on a one-year deal. Rodgers officially is reuniting with the Steelers and their new head coach Mike McCarthy for the 2026 season. pic.twitter.com/ej9maN3MBq
— Adam Schefter (@AdamSchefter) May 16, 2026
It’s a one-year deal. Make of that what you will.
Las Vegas drafted Fernando Mendoza first overall on April 24th. Heisman winner. 16-0 national champion at Indiana. 41 touchdown passes, 72% completion rate. Joins Joe Burrow and Cam Newton as the only players in the common draft era to pull the Heisman-title-No. 1 pick trifecta. The franchise is betting everything on this kid — and the kid isn’t even starting Week 1. Kirk Cousins opens the season. Klint Kubiak’s staff wants to let Mendoza develop without throwing him to wolves in September.
Reasonable. Except the wolves just re-signed.
Rodgers Back in Pittsburgh: What the One-Year Deal Actually Means for the AFC North
The Rodgers-McCarthy reunion deserves more skepticism than it’s getting. These two spent 13 years together in Green Bay, went to nine playoffs, won Super Bowl XLV, and then McCarthy got fired midseason in 2018 — in no small part because of a reported fracture with his quarterback. McCarthy called it a “great story” when ESPN asked about a potential Rodgers return before the deal was done. Whatever lingering friction exists behind the scenes, Mike Tomlin is gone after 19 seasons and McCarthy is now calling the shots in Pittsburgh. They’re stuck with each other.
And yet: it probably works. Because Rodgers is motivated in a way that a 3,322-yard, 24-touchdown, 7-interception season with a busted wrist can make you. His PFF grade last year was 68.7 — 29th out of 43 qualified quarterbacks according to Pro Football Focus — which is not a number that flatters him. A 42-year-old coming off a middling efficiency season is not a given. But Pittsburgh gave him Michael Pittman Jr., signed Rico Dowdle (a 1,000-yard rusher), drafted Germie Bernard, and shored up the offensive line. This is not the same skeleton crew. Rodgers now has actual weapons. A guy who was 29th with that support could easily be 12th with this one.
Fernando Mendoza and the Raiders Are Walking Into a Buzzsaw — and That’s Before Week 1
The AFC in 2026 is not a conference that grants developmental years. Josh Allen is still in Buffalo. Lamar Jackson is still in Baltimore on an extension that has him locked in through his prime. Patrick Mahomes tore his ACL in December and his Week 1 availability is genuinely uncertain — but even a post-surgery Mahomes operating at 80% is a problem, and the Chiefs brought in Gardner Minshew as insurance, not as a replacement. The window the Raiders thought they had — a Mahomes gap season — may not open all the way.
This is the structural problem. The Raiders built their 2026 draft class around a long-term timeline. An unnamed NFL executive told Yardbarker it “will take two or three years for Mendoza to thrive” because “they just don’t have a good enough team.” That’s not a hot take. That might be accurate. The Raiders’ receiver room was already thin when they drafted Mendoza — they fixed some things and left other things unfixed. Kirk Cousins buying six months of runway for Mendoza makes sense as a development strategy. It makes less sense as a plan to stay relevant in a conference with Rodgers, Allen, Jackson, and a hobbled-but-dangerous Mahomes.
Think about Peyton Manning arriving in Denver in 2012. No one was treating that AFC as a place to grow. The Raiders right now are in the spot of every team that had to face that Manning Broncos offense while trying to figure out their own quarterback situation — except those teams at least had their starter already playing.
The Raiders are not tanking. They’re not supposed to be tanking. Kubiak came over from Seattle’s Super Bowl LX staff to win. But there’s a version of 2026 where Cousins goes 4-6, Mendoza takes over, gets roughed up by Pittsburgh and Baltimore in consecutive weeks, and the narrative becomes “maybe that executive was right.” The AFC does not pause for anyone. It didn’t pause for the pre-Mahomes Chiefs version of Las Vegas. It’s not pausing for this one.
Rodgers coming back to Pittsburgh, at $25 million, with a real supporting cast, under a head coach who has everything to prove — that’s not a team conceding to a rebuild. That’s a team that thinks it can win the Super Bowl. The Raiders need to figure out, fast, whether 2026 is a year they’re competing or a year they’re surviving.
