If Monday proves to be Rodgers’ final NFL game, it would be a most unfitting conclusion to such a sterling career. His final pass will have been caught by Calen Bullock, the Texans defensive back who returned a Rodgers interception 50 yards for the first pick-six of the quarterback’s playoff career.
Rodgers was 17 of 33 for 146 yards, the interception and a 50.8 passer rating. His yardage and rating — along with the six points scored — were all career postseason lows.
Rodgers’ Monday night counterpart, C.J. Stroud, had an equally disastrous evening, fumbling five times with two lost in addition to an interception. However, Rodgers and the Steelers offense’s inability to cash in was ultimately Pittsburgh’s undoing in a game led by Houston, 10-6, entering the fourth quarter.
The Texans racked up 23 fourth-quarter points, with the knockout blow coming when Rodgers was engulfed by Will Anderson Jr. and Sheldon Rankins for a sack — one of four Rodgers took — with Rankins subsequently rumbling 33 yards for a score. Hence, Rodgers was unable to muster any Steelers touchdowns, but the Texans scored two off his turnovers, marking the game as the first since the Chicago Bears’ 73-0 NFL Championship Game win over Washington in 1940 that a team — the Texans — scored multiple defensive TDs and allowed zero in a playoff contest.
It added up to Pittsburgh’s NFL-record fifth-consecutive playoff loss by double-digit points — and seventh overall.
With yet another one-and-done Pittsburgh playoff showing, questions about Tomlin’s tenure — the longest currently in the NFL — will abound. There has been constant chatter regarding the matter throughout a mercurial 10-7 season in which the Steelers rallied for the AFC North title. NFL Network Insider Ian Rapoport has reported throughout the season that Tomlin would not be fired and if he didn’t coach in 2026, it would be by Tomlin’s choosing, perhaps to take a year off.
Rodgers believes calling into question Tomlin’s security — or even that of his former Green Bay Packers head coach Matt LaFleur — is a rather asinine reality of the current NFL landscape.
“This league has changed a lot in my 21 years,” said Rodgers, who won four AP NFL MVPs with the Packers from 2005-2022. “When you hear a conversation about the Mike Tomlins of the world, Matt LaFleurs of the world, those are just two that I played for. When I first got in the league, there wouldn’t be conversation about whether those guys were on the hot seat. But the way that the league is covered now and the way that there’s snap decisions and the validity given to the Twitter experts and all the experts on TV now who make it seem like they know what the hell they’re talking about, to me that’s an absolute joke. For either of those two guys to be on the hot seat is really apropos of where we’re at as a society and a league because obviously Matt’s done a lot of great things in Green Bay and we had a lot of success. Mike T’s had more success than damn near anybody in the league for the last 19, 20 years. More than that, though, when you have the right guy and the culture is right, you don’t think about making a change. But there’s a lot of pressure that comes from the outside and obviously that sways decisions from time to time, but it’s not how I would do things and not how the league used to be.”
