Rodgers downplays facing Jets: 'It's Week 1'

PITTSBURGH -- Aaron Rodgers isn't giving his former team any free bulletin board material this week.

Speaking at his weekly media availability Wednesday, the Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback deflected all questions about returning to MetLife Stadium to face the New York Jets in Sunday's season opener, downplaying the significance of the game.

Asked whether there was anything to the game because of the location and opponent or whether it was business as usual, Rodgers was brief.

"Yeah," he said, "it's Week 1."

Rodgers was similarly succinct when asked about what he expects of his emotions when he runs out of the tunnel at MetLife.

"I'd just be excited for Week 1," he said.

Rodgers, of course, was released by the Jets, under new coach Aaron Glenn, in March after a disastrous two-year stint in New York that started with a season-ending Achilles injury in the 2023 opener and ended with a disjointed 5-12 campaign in 2024. Rodgers ultimately landed with the Steelers, signing a one-year, $13.65 million contract prior to their June minicamp after a prolonged courtship. The Jets, meanwhile, signed one-time Steelers quarterback Justin Fields to a two-year, $40 million deal early in free agency.

For Rodgers, joining the Steelers is the second time in his career -- and second time in three seasons -- he has started over with a new organization after spending his first 18 years with the Green Bay Packers. So far, it has been a seamless transition.

"This is the second new, so it's the new new," he said. "I'm loving being here. The way that I've been welcomed has been really, really special from top down to the fans to guys in the locker room and sports staff, the men and women that work for this organization has been really, really special."

Though Glenn brought a new defensive system with him to New York, Rodgers still has plenty of familiarity with the players in it.

"I know some of the guys," he said. "Obviously the Williams brothers [Quincy and Quinnen] and Sauce [Gardner] and TA [Tony Adams] and Jamien [Sherwood] and Michael Carter, Micheal Clemons, my buddy Jermaine [Johnson] is coming back from his Achilles. I don't want to forget anybody. Who else do we got over there? I mean the young guys, [Braiden] McGregor ... Marcelino McCrary-Ball, so yeah, I know the guys pretty well, but they're running a little different scheme."

Rodgers, though, was curt when asked whether he still kept in touch with them or anyone else from the organization.

"I'm not going to tell you that," he said.

Rodgers' evasive demeanor about anything involving his old team was correctly predicted by Steelers coach Mike Tomlin in his weekly news conference a day earlier.

I'm sure he's capable of compartmentalizing that," Tomlin said of Rodgers' return. "If it means anything to him more than a normal game, he probably wouldn't tell you. We're going to go play football."

Rodgers isn't just mum about the significance of the return to the media. He's also downplaying it to his new teammates.

"He makes it seem like it's just another game, and I think that's cool for us, being able to just put it in our minds that it's another game," tight end Pat Freiermuth said. "Obviously we want to go out there and win it for him, but I don't think he's kind of living off that, that we're going back to his old stomping ground. I think he's just ready to go out there and compete and play."

Wide receiver DK Metcalf said he can see Rodgers' eagerness to get on the field, but it has nothing to do with the opponent.

"I mean I don't think his former team has anything to do with it," he said. "I think he just loves the game of football, and he's ready to go out there and put a product out there on the field. I know it is kind of a bad taste left in his mouth from the previous years. He just wants to go out there and win as many games as he can."

Like Rodgers, Metcalf is also eager to get on the field at MetLife, not because of any personal history with the team, but because it will be the first time the first-team offense has taken a snap as a complete unit in a game.

Tomlin, though, isn't worried about the lack of game action.