Last season, Aaron Rodgers did nearly everything you could ask of a 42-year-old quarterback trying to prove he still belonged. He started 16 games, threw 24 touchdowns, and kept a Pittsburgh Steelers offense afloat behind an O-line that let him get hit constantly. PFF’s newest starting quarterback rankings looked at all that and buried him at 22nd out of 32.

“Father Time has caught up with the 42-year-old – he earned just a 68.0 PFF overall grade last year, the worst mark of his career,” write PFF’s Dalton Wasserman and Max Chadwick. “His 38.1 PFF passing grade under pressure ranked sixth-worst among qualifying quarterbacks.

“He has become far more conservative than at any point in his career, as his 6.6-yard average depth of target was a career low and ranked fourth-lowest in the league. Rodgers will try to recapture the magic one final time in 2026, but his best days are clearly behind him.”

Those numbers don’t sit in a vacuum. A 6.6-yard depth of target is a sharp drop from his average of 9.2 from the Green Bay Packers days. Rodgers was protecting his body last season and checking down because the pocket kept collapsing around him. Pittsburgh’s front five allowed 31 sacks in 2025; 29 landed on Rodgers, costing him 180 yards. He also averaged 2.56 seconds per throw and depth with a 21% pressure-to-sack ratio.

Now, a 42-year-old getting clobbered behind a line that couldn’t hold up isn’t the same story as a quarterback who’s simply lost his edge, and Pittsburgh has addressed it directly. New O-Line coach James Campen spent 12 years in Green Bay working alongside Mike McCarthy, coaching seven Pro Bowl linemen in that stretch. NFL analyst Brian Baldinger has even called Campen “infinitely better than what they had.”

Rodgers doesn’t need a new playbook. His familiarity with McCarthy’s system – as well as its similarity to the system Pittsburgh ran last season – is a big cause of optimism in Steel City this offseason. If Rodgers gets a pocket that lasts half a second longer and keeps protecting its quarterback, Rodgers gets a chance to flip the QB rankings.

What’s more, Mike McCarthy’s first season with the Steelers has already changed the building’s outlook. He pulled the benches and bleachers off the practice fields, a small detail that veterans like T.J. Watt and former stars like Ben Roethlisberger have been deeply impressed with. And all of this translates into the training camp looming close.

The players report at Saint Vincent College in Latrobe on July 28th for the 59th straight year to kick off the training camp. The first padded practice is scheduled to be on August 3rd, and McCarthy has already circled it on his calendar.

“When we get to Latrobe, we want to play football,” McCarthy said recently. “We have those three practices in helmets and shorts and then ramp-up [practice], but when that Monday hits, we want to get going and make sure we’re ready to play games.”

In the middle of camp, an August 13 preseason matchup against the Green Bay Packers carries an interesting storyline given McCarthy’s history there, but nobody expects Rodgers to be on the field for it. However, beyond that one exhibition game, Sports Illustrated’s Albert Breer has flagged another test for McCarthy.

“There’s a real balance that homecoming Steelers coach Mike McCarthy will have to strike between managing an old roster and establishing his program,” Breer wrote in an offseason assessment recently. “Generally, Year 1 isn’t when you take the foot off the gas.

“The good news is that McCarthy has always been willing to change and adapt to the conditions around him, and he’s had veteran teams in the past, which tells me he’ll have a good game plan for having Aaron Rodgers, T.J. Watt, Jalen Ramsey, Cam Heyward, and the rest of the franchise’s elder statesmen both rested and ready for Week 1. Making sure that doesn’t affect the rest of the team will be the tricky part.”

PFF made its call on where Aaron Rodgers stands ahead of the training camp. What happens in Latrobe, with a rebuilt line ahead of him, is his shot at making that 22nd-place ranking look wrong.