Derek Carr’s tenure as a New Orleans Saint was defined by the damage he took. He was an injury report mainstay in his first season, managing to start every week in 2023. He was less fortunate in 2024; his 10 games played were the fewest in a single season of his 11-year NFL career.
This all set the stage for his surprising offseason announcement. After more than a decade of damage, lingering pain and extensive surgery on the horizon, Carr opted to retire rather than go through rehab and play at a diminished rate. That’s a win for the Saints, who’ll save $30 million in salary cap space in 2026 for a quarterback who may not have been in their future plans. It’s also a win for another quarterback who almost certainly was *not* part of New Orleans’ checklist.
Enter Aaron Rodgers.
Rodgers saw his list of suitors dwindle throughout the offseason as franchise opted for quarterbacks who were not:
a) 41 years old
b) coming off the worst seasons of their NFL careers and, importantly,
c) the genesis of a media circus each week from the moment he joins the roster until well after he’s departed.
This left a union with the Pittsburgh Steelers as his only feasible NFL option. Pittsburgh offered the sole ready-made starting quarterback position; all he’d have to do was beat out Mason Rudolph or Will Howard for the QB1 role. The Steelers could set their terms within reason, knowing the only other reasonable option for the four-time MVP was retirement — a move that would almost certainly relinquish the reach and attention baked into the quarterback’s psyche.
But a new QB1 role just opened up. The competition is Tyler Shough, Spencer Rattler and Jake Haener. And the franchise involved has traditionally refused a rebuild under general manager Mickey Loomis, instead spending big on veterans who have failed to move the needle and, thus, kept the Saints in the phantom zone between contention and the reset that could lead them to contention.
Suddenly, a new contender has emerged for Rodgers’ services. If he doesn’t want to challenge the leadership of an 18-year head coach in Mike Tomlin, he may be able to instead lean on Kellen Moore — a first year head coach who was a freshman at Boise State when Tomlin took the reins in Pittsburgh. Money almost certainly isn’t an issue for Rodgers (though he certainly bristled when he had to fly himself out to northern New Jersey just so the New York Jets could tell him to his face he was being released), leaving his leverage here to work out in personal power and decision making.
Rodgers has some extra latitude to clear skipping a minicamp for whatever wellness retreat he found in the darkest corners of Reddit. He can use it to lobby for continued weekly appearances with Pat McAfee to lob borderline libelous accusations at late night hosts. It can be the trump card played to ensure he sees his own health specialists instead of team doctors.
To be clear, there is no publicly confirmed interest between the two sides. Even so, the Saints are one of two teams with an unsettled quarterback room. The highest profile free agent QB, behind Rodgers, is either Carson Wentz or a semi-retired Teddy Bridgewater. Kirk Cousins may be an option, but the Atlanta Falcons have made it clear they’re happy to keep him on the roster without the right trade that takes a significant chunk of the money owed to him off their books — and he, like Rodgers, was a bit of a mess coming off Achilles surgery last season anyway.
Thus, the league’s 22nd-best quarterback, who will turn 42 in December, has a market that will allow him at least some of the freedom he enjoyed when he was still elite — or at least reasonably capable of convincing teams he was. Rodgers always had an out thanks to his ability to retire and retain his influence, even at a potentially diminishing rate. Now he’s got two teams who could talk themselves into his services despite declining play and the media headaches that have sprouted from Rodgers’ play like weeds late in his career.
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