Steelers Deploy Obscure Tender Strategy on Rodgers, But the Real Question Is Whether They've Already Lost Him

The Pittsburgh Steelers made a procedural move this week that on its surface looks defensive and mildly desperate. They placed a right-of-first-refusal tender on quarterback Aaron Rodgers, a mechanism so rarely used in modern NFL free agency that most fans probably had to Google what it actually means. The optics matter here, though, because what the Steelers are really telegraphing to the world is this: we're not confident enough in our quarterback situation to let this guy test the open market, but we're also not willing to commit real money to keep him.

That's the subtext underneath the procedural move. And if you're reading between the lines, it tells you everything you need to know about how badly the Rodgers experiment has gone in Pittsburgh.

Let's start with what a right-of-first-refusal tender actually does, because the distinction matters for understanding Steelers strategy. Unlike the more common franchise tag or restricted free agent tender, the right-of-first-refusal is basically the NFL equivalent of a preemptive negotiating position dressed up in legalese. It allows the Steelers to match any offer Rodgers receives from another team without surrendering draft picks, which is what happens with a restricted tag. If Rodgers gets an offer from, say, the Tennessee Titans or Las Vegas Raiders, Pittsburgh gets the opportunity to match it and keep him. If they choose not to match, they lose him for nothing. No compensation. No draft picks heading their way. Just gone.

The Steelers could have gone the restricted tender route. They could have slapped a first or second round tender on Rodgers, which would have forced any team trying to sign him to give up those picks. That's typically what teams do when they want to protect a young quarterback with upside. The fact that they didn't suggests something important: the organization doesn't believe Rodgers has enough value or upside to warrant that level of protection. They're willing to lose him rather than extract value from another team. That's the real story here.

This whole situation traces back to a decision that looked clever at the time but has aged poorly in just one season. The Steelers drafted Rodgers in the third round of the 2023 draft out of USC. The calculus was straightforward: take a developmental quarterback prospect, let him sit behind Ben Roethlisberger's successor, and see if he develops into something usable. Reasonable approach for a rebuilding roster. The problem is that Rodgers has done essentially nothing to suggest he's going to develop into anything. His play in limited opportunities has been unremarkable at best and catastrophic at worst, depending on which game you watched.

Then the Steelers swung for a more established option. They traded for Justin Fields, giving up significant capital to the Chicago Bears to bring in a quarterback with actual NFL experience, even if that experience hasn't been particularly illustrious. Fields at least has proven he can function in an NFL offense. He's started games. He's thrown to NFL receivers in actual games. His floor is higher than Rodgers' floor, which now matters because the Steelers clearly don't see a path to Rodgers becoming their long-term solution.

Now we've got this weird situation where the Steelers have three quarterbacks on their roster and none of them is the answer. Russell Wilson was supposed to be a stopgap this season. Fields is the midterm experiment. Rodgers is the lottery ticket that hasn't cashed. The right-of-first-refusal tender is Pittsburgh's way of saying we're not letting Rodgers walk without at least having a chance to match any offer, but we're also not investing anything substantial to keep him.

The economics of the situation are worth examining here. Rodgers is due a modest salary by quarterback standards, somewhere in the range that a young reserve quarterback would command. He's not going to command massive attention on the open market because scouts and front offices across the league have had the same chance the Steelers have had to evaluate his tape. What they've seen hasn't impressed them enough to trigger bidding wars. If another team wanted Rodgers badly enough, they would have traded for him already or offered him a deal that would have made the Steelers match it. The fact that we're in this holding pattern suggests that no team views him as a high-priority free agent.

That tells you something important about the supply and demand dynamics here. Rodgers is cheap. He's young. He's theoretically available. Yet nobody is breaking down doors to get him. That's the market speaking, and the market is saying what the Steelers already know: Rodgers is a failed first-round experiment, even if he wasn't technically a first-rounder. The franchise's move with this tender is essentially them hedging against the unlikely scenario that some team does see something in him that everybody else has missed.

This is also worth viewing through the lens of what the Steelers gave up to get Fields. They surrendered a first-round pick and a future third-rounder to Chicago. That's an expensive bet on Fields being the answer to the quarterback question. If the Steelers thought there was any real chance that Rodgers could develop into competition for Fields down the line, they wouldn't have given up that much capital. They would have kept their draft picks and let Rodgers compete for the job. Instead, they made it clear through their actions that Rodgers isn't part of their future. The right-of-first-refusal tender is just covering the extremely remote possibility that somebody else sees something they don't.

From a CBA perspective, this tender is also worth examining. The Steelers are essentially using a minimum-cost mechanism to maintain some level of control over Rodgers' movement. If they had offered him a standard restricted tender with a higher offer, they would be signaling confidence in him as an asset. Instead, they're using the most defensible tender available while assuming the most risk of losing him. That's a calculated move designed to send a message that Rodgers isn't part of the long-term plan while technically retaining the ability to block any blockbuster offer that might come his way.

The bigger picture here is that the Steelers' quarterback situation in 2024 is a mess. They've got three quarterbacks and zero answers. Wilson is a veteran placeholder who everyone understands is temporary. Fields is an interesting talent who hasn't had a real opportunity to prove himself in the right system. Rodgers is a prospect who hasn't shown the ability to develop into anything useful. This tender on Rodgers doesn't fix any of that. It just prevents the Steelers from looking completely incompetent by letting him walk without at least trying to match an offer.

What makes this interesting from a league-wide perspective is that the Steelers are using a tactic that most modern teams have largely abandoned. The right-of-first-refusal tender has fallen out of favor because it forces teams to choose between matching offers or losing players for nothing, with no compensation coming their way. Teams would rather use restricted tenders or franchise tags. The fact that Pittsburgh is going this route suggests they're willing to take the risk of losing Rodgers because they don't place significant value on keeping him. They're playing poker with a hand they don't really believe in.

Whether any team actually bites on Rodgers remains to be seen. Based on the current market realities, it seems unlikely. He'll probably end up back with the Steelers or sitting out until late in the offseason when a team desperate for quarterback help might take a flier on him. Either way, the right-of-first-refusal tender is less about the Steelers believing in Rodgers and more about them refusing to admit they made a mistake with a third-round pick. It's defensive positioning in a situation where Pittsburgh has already moved on.