It doesn’t matter if you know the playcall sheet by heart, or if you’ve practiced your routes a thousand times at camp. Come game day, if you’re playing for the Pittsburgh Steelers, the only thing that determines whether you get to catch the ball is veteran quarterback Aaron Rodgers. For Steelers’ 2nd-round pick Germie Bernard, that reality was front and center on their regular season opener.

Rodgers distributed the ball between seven targets – going 24-of-40 for 221 yards and a touchdown – in that 20-13 victory over the Atlanta Falcons, but Bernard didn’t have a single throw aimed at him. Away from the stat lines, Bernard just received three offensive snaps (5%) and four special teams snaps (13%) in Week 1, leaving nothing to show for it on his stat sheets. Moving forward, per Steelers reporter Ray Fittipaldo, that status quo is likely to remain.

“I don’t expect Bernard to play more. Maybe a few more snaps, but no big change in his role,” wrote Fittipaldo on a fan chat transcript published in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. When someone asked him how long before he “gets some quality time on the field,” Fittipaldo’s answer made it clear that the decision lies with Rodgers.

“When Aaron Rodgers deems he is ready for a bigger role,” Fittipaldo wrote.

Now, it’s no secret that Rodgers holds his targets to a different standard. If you’re not up to the mark in the 4x MVP’s eyes, you don’t get the ball. One of his former Green Bay Packers teammates – RB Jamaal Williams – revealed in early September that one of the harshest things you can get from A-Rod is a death stare when you mess up a read.

“I just feel like A-Rod is so influential to all the kids and everybody that if you’re on his team, you will make sure that you’re doing your job,” Williams told Good Morning Football. “Because you don’t want to get the A-Rod ‘you messed up stare.’ That literally is just like a (side-eye stare), like he does one of those and then he looks away, and you know, ‘Oh man, I probably ain’t gonna get this ball no more.”

Through the preseason, even though Rodgers didn’t play a single snap, he did see a lot to base his evaluations on. Germie Bernard only had the one catch in preseason Week 1 against the Buffalo Bills – a 13-yard touchdown catch. In Week 2 against the New York Jets, he couldn’t log a single catch, and he finished with 4 catches for 51 yards in the preseason finale against the Packers. While preseason performance is not the yardstick for regular-season performance measurement, Rodgers seems to have better targets with higher upside.

Against the Falcons in the season opener, veterans TE Pat Freiermuth and RB Jaylen Warren got the most catches (5), followed by DK Metcalf (4), with Roman Wilson (3) and Michael Pittman Jr. (3) bringing up the rear alongside Darnell Washington (2) and Rico Dowdle (2). If you talk about just the snap counts, Wilson – who was Bernard’s training camp competition – got 37 of them. That doesn’t mean the 47th overall pick from this year’s draft is without any upside, though. Rodgers, for one, has already seen something building in him through the preseason.

“He’s got a great attitude. He really wants to learn,” Rodgers said on September 2. “The best thing I can say about him is he hasn’t made repeat mistakes. There’s mistakes that are going to happen as part of the game, especially for young guys. But when he does make a mistake, he takes it to heart and studies it and makes sure he doesn’t repeat that thing.”

Now, Pittman Jr. is dealing with a foot issue – he was listed as a non-participant for Thursday’s practice. If he’s not feeling 100% by Week 2, there’s a good chance Germie Bernard gets more snaps when the Steelers visit the New England Patriots. Whether those snaps turn into targets and touchdowns – as Fittipaldo notes – will depend on whether Aaron Rodgers believes he’s ready for them.