Mike McCarthy and the Pittsburgh Steelers need a quarterback, and the team’s new head coach reuniting with his former signal-caller, Aaron Rodgers, might be their most viable option for the 2026 season.
Does that possibility interest McCarthy?
“It would be a great story,” McCarthy said about the Steelers potentially re-signing Rodgers at a tribute event for former Green Bay Packers executive Bob Harlan on Monday, according to ESPN.
“I don’t know — and I would love to tell everybody about breaking news, but it’s really cool to see Aaron at [age] 42. To see a young man at 22 and all of what he’s been able to accomplish and where he’s at in his personal life and trying to make this decision. I think he’s in a really good place.”
McCarthy, who was the Packers’ quarterbacks coach under Ray Rhodes in 1999, took over as Green Bay’s head coach for the 2006 season, which was Rodgers’ second season in the sport with him backing up Hall of Famer Brett Favre.
Ironically, in Rodgers’ third season as Green Bay’s full-time quarterback (2010), the Packers won Super Bowl XLV against head coach Mike Tomlin — McCarthy’s successor in Pittsburgh — and the Steelers. The Packers made the playoffs in nine of McCarthy’s 13 seasons as head coach, eight of those seasons coming with Rodgers under center.
Green Bay went a combined 125-77-2 in the regular season and 10-8 in the postseason under McCarthy from 2006-18. Meanwhile, Rodgers won two of his four NFL MVPs with McCarthy as his head coach (2011 and 2014).
After a year off (2019), McCarthy became the head coach of the Dallas Cowboys in 2020, with the team going a combined 49-35 in the regular season and 1-3 in the postseason under him from 2020-24. He then didn’t coach in 2025 and was named Pittsburgh’s head coach this past January, following Tomlin stepping down.
In all, McCarthy is 15th in NFL history with 174 regular-season wins as a head coach and tied for 11th with 11 postseason wins.
As for Rodgers, the 42-year-old quarterback totaled 3,322 passing yards, 24 passing touchdowns, seven interceptions and a 94.8 passer rating across 16 regular-season starts for the Steelers last year, while completing 65.7% of his passes. Pittsburgh, which won the AFC North at 10-7, later lost at home to the Houston Texans in the AFC wild-card round.
If Rodgers retires or the Steelers seek a new quarterback altogether, veterans Kirk Cousins, Russell Wilson and Jimmy Garoppolo are free agents. The Steelers currently have Mason Rudolph and 2025 sixth-round pick Will Howard in their quarterback room.
Pittsburgh also has five picks in the first 100 selections of the 2026 NFL Draft: 21, 53, 76, 85 and 99.
