Steelers quarterback Aaron Rodgers is checked on by teammates after a crushing sack by the Bills' Joey Bosa in the third quarter of Pittsburgh's 26-7 loss. Joe Sargent / Getty Images
Aaron Rodgers was dazed and bloodied, looking every bit as old as his upcoming birthday suggests. He was summoning the image of another Hall of Famer who took a pounding in Pittsburgh during his final year.
Y.A. Tittle, quarterback of the New York Giants, was blasted by the Steelers' John Baker in Pitt Stadium in 1964, leaving him helmetless and on his knees in the end zone as blood streamed down his pale forehead and cheek. The snapshot might be the most famous photo ever taken of an NFL player, as it captured the violence of professional football and the dangers faced by the aging greats as they reach for one last glorious Sunday.
Tittle was league MVP in 1963, throwing 36 touchdown passes for an 11-3 team that lost in the championship game. In '64, he was good for only 10 touchdown passes against 22 interceptions for a 2-10-2 team before retiring at 38. Tittle had lost it almost overnight.
And then the Steelers' quarterback took a shot from Buffalo's Joey Bosa to open the second half Sunday evening that reminded everyone Rodgers will turn 42 Tuesday and will likely end his career in January short of a second Super Bowl ring he's been hunting for a long, long time.
Wearing a conspicuous cast on his fractured left wrist, Rodgers took the snap from behind center, ran a play-action fake, danced to his left, darted over to his right, planted and then got separated from the ball by Bosa's crushing backside hit. As Buffalo's Christian Benford was scooping and scoring, Rodgers was down in a heap, wincing. He appeared to have crash-landed on that left arm that he was now holding gingerly against his body.
This season has to be it for Rodgers, right? This is how it's going to end for one of the best to ever do it, playing .500 football in front of a fan base that's tired enough of the Steelers' relative mediocrity to boo its beloved home team and to chant for the firing of a head coach, Mike Tomlin, who has never stuck them with a losing season in his first 18 on the job.
That just might be the case for Rodgers and the 6-6 Steelers, losers of five of their last seven heading into a battle with the 6-6 Ravens for first place in the AFC North. The quarterback hasn't ruled out a return for the 2026 season, and he did walk into what would be a dreadful Buffalo performance with perfectly acceptable numbers -- 19 touchdowns against seven picks and a passer rating of 97.7.
But this 26-7 beatdown did nothing to disabuse anyone of the notion that Rodgers has five regular-season games left in his career and, if he's lucky, a one-and-done playoff appearance for the road. And if that's the case, Rodgers will benefit from this middling experience in Pittsburgh.
He might not get to show everyone his greatness, but he would get to remind everyone about his toughness.
But facts are facts. He played four seasons from high school through junior college and college with a partially torn ACL, an injury that once compelled a doctor to suggest that he give up football, advice Rodgers called "the beginning of people telling me I couldn't do stuff."
A kid who didn't earn a single Division 1 scholarship offer out of high school made himself a first-round draft pick of the Packers, a Super Bowl MVP and a multiple league MVP winner with the kind of toughness he showed on opening night of the 2018 season against Chicago. That's when Rodgers was carted off after suffering a knee fracture and MCL sprain in the first half.
That night, Mike McCarthy was told on his headset that his franchise quarterback was probably done for the year. Rodgers returned after halftime and threw three fourth-quarter touchdown passes to give Green Bay its biggest fourth-quarter comeback in 100 years of football.
"I thought the season was over for him," said McCarthy's offensive coordinator, Joe Philbin. "What he was able to do the first four or five weeks, he had to live in the training room. I was shocked he was able to play. We had to play the whole game in the pistol and shotgun because he couldn't get under center for a while."
Just like Rodgers couldn't get under center Sunday against the Bills. He missed only one series before he was back in there with tape stretched across the bridge of a nose that appeared to have been on the wrong side of a Terence Crawford sparring session.
Tomlin had said in the lead-up to the game that Rodgers was "all systems go," and this is what "all systems go" looks like for an NFL player almost twice the age of your average rookie. In a news conference in Pittsburgh that he rightfully used to rebuke his receivers for a variety of sins, Rodgers said he hoped his nose wasn't broken but that "it was bleeding all over the place."
His left wrist had to be barking, too, though, on cue, Rodgers said he felt good enough to be out there. He said he felt good enough to be out there in 2022, when he played most of his final Packers season with a fractured right thumb. He said he felt good enough to be out there for Jets practice late in 2023, a mere 77 days after surgery on the ruptured Achilles suffered four snaps into his New York career.
Rodgers told his body specialist, Aaron Alexander, that he would play against Washington on Christmas Eve if the Jets happened to defeat Miami the previous week to keep their remote playoff hopes alive. The Jets got blown out by the Dolphins, of course, killing a crazy dream that was only made semi-possible by Rodgers' willpower.
A year later, the quarterback made 17 starts while playing through a series of leg injuries that were more confining than he let on. Rodgers has looked a little stronger and healthier for much of this season with the Steelers, at least until he got pancaked against Buffalo.
"It was hard to watch," said his juco coach at Butte College and longtime friend Craig Rigsbee. "But Aaron's always been as tough as they come.
"A broken nose was never keeping him out. Even that broken wrist wasn't keeping him out. To play this long in the NFL and to take as many hits as he has and not miss many games, you have to be really tough and able to play with pain, which a lot of guys can't do. And the game has to be very important to you.
"Aaron certainly doesn't need the money or fame or anything. But he can compartmentalize the pain and play through it because the game is still very important to him."
That was obvious Sunday, when there was no greatness to be found on the Pittsburgh side of the ball. All a diminished Aaron Rodgers could do was remind the world that toughness was always his most lethal weapon.