The Aaron Rodgers era for the Pittsburgh Steelers got off to a winning start, as Mike Tomlin’s team rolled into MetLife Stadium and left with a 34-32 win over the New York Jets.
Given the storylines pre-game with this being Rodgers’ return, you can bet your house that this one had a little more meaning for Rodgers, given how his time in the Big Apple ended, and his performance was one of the better ones in recent memory.
Rodgers would end his Week 1 outing going 22 of 30 for 244 yards and four touchdowns while posting a 136.7 rating as he wound back the clock and delivered a performance that should give Steelers fans hope and positivity moving forward.
But what did Tomlin think about the performance of his team?
“Certainly was a lot to learn from that performance, it’s really good to learn while winning,” Tomlin said. “So I’m thankful we did enough to win the game, but certainly there were things that were indicative of Week 1.”
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Rodgers begins season with a bang
Now, I’m going to start this with the “it’s only one game” mantra, and I’m not going to jump to conclusions based on Rodgers being on a lowly Jets team.
But it was a game that saw all the best of what made Rodgers great, aside from the mobility (four sacks).
He fired dart after dart to his receivers, with DK Metcalf (83 yards) being his go-to weapon, and Rodgers had to shoulder most of the offensive workload and coped well.
The Jets’ defense halted the run game in its tracks as the Steelers could only muster a total of 53 yards from 20 combined carries, so the four-time MVP winner did the heavy lifting. Hopefully, that won’t be the norm for the Steelers’ offense.
But for one week? It was fine as Rodgers reminded all of the doubters out there (some from the Jets organization) that there’s still enough juice in the tank.
Now comes the hard part – doing it consistently.
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