SI:AM | Aaron Rodgers Did Just Enough to Save the Steelers

The 42-year-old quarterback started slow but then made several clutch throws to save Pittsburgh’s season.

Aaron Rodgers stepped up when the Steelers needed him and led his team to the playoffs. / Barry Reeger-Imagn Images

Good morning, I’m Dan Gartland. You’ve already seen Tyler Loop’s season-ending missed field goal for the Ravens, but you probably haven’t seen the calls from each team’s radio broadcast. 

In today’s SI:AM: 
👏 Steelers win defacto playoff game
👋 Stefanski out in Cleveland
☘️ Celtics exceeding expectations

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Rodgers outduels Jackson

Aaron Rodgers has spent much of this season looking very much like a 42-year-old on the brink of retirement. That includes the first half of Sunday night’s do-or-die game against the Ravens, when the stagnant Steelers offense managed just three points. But Rodgers was the catalyst for Pittsburgh in the second half, leading three touchdown drives of at least 60 yards as the Steelers prevailed in a wild one to claim the AFC North. 

It wasn’t exactly vintage Rodgers. He did throw for a season-high 294 yards, but he did so on 31-for-47 passing. That’s the third-most pass attempts in his career in a game in which he failed to exceed 300 yards passing. The fact that he was able to move the ball as effectively as he did is a miracle, though, considering the diminished group of pass-catchers Rodgers had to work with. 

D.K. Metcalf has been by far Rodgers’s favorite receiver this season (850 receiving yards, more than double what any other Pittsburgh player had entering Sunday’s game), but was serving the second of a two-game suspension resulting from an altercation with a fan in Detroit. Without Metcalf, the Steelers leaned heavily on their running backs in the passing game. Kenneth Gainwell led the way with eight catches for 64 yards, and Jaylen Warren caught five passes for 33 yards. Nine different Pittsburgh players caught a pass. 

After a first half in which the Steelers looked stuck in the mud, Rodgers made several fantastic throws in the second half to get his team back in the game. Perhaps the best was a pinpoint pass to receiver Adam Thielen on Pittsburgh’s opening drive of the second half that moved the Steelers into the red zone and eventually led to their first touchdown of the game. 

Rodgers throws a DART to Adam Thielen

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Rodgers will be just a small part of how this game is remembered, though. The fourth quarter was as exciting a conclusion to a game as you’ll ever see. Here’s the quick version: 

• First, the Ravens retook the lead, 17–13, on a 50-yard touchdown pass from Lamar Jackson to Zay Flowers that required Jackson to evade two unblocked rushers. 
• The Steelers, aided by a penalty for a kickoff out of bounds, answered with a touchdown drive of their own to make it 20–17.
• Baltimore went back ahead, 24–20, with another bomb from Jackson to Flowers, this time for 64 yards. 
• Pittsburgh scored another touchdown, but Chris Boswell’s extra point attempt was partially blocked, so the Ravens, trailing 26–24, could win the game with a field goal. 
• Jackson converted a fourth-and-7 with 14 seconds left on a pass to tight end Isaiah Likely to set up a game-winning field goal attempt by rookie Tyler Loop from 44 yards out. He missed it.

It was an instant classic befitting one of the NFL’s premier rivalries. Seeing two excellent quarterbacks duke it out is always a treat, especially when it might be the final career game for one of them. The Steelers’ win means Rodgers’s career will extend for at least one more game, Monday night against the Texans. Houston has the best defense in the NFL, but maybe Rodgers has some more magic left in him. 

The best of Sports Illustrated

• The 2025 NFL playoff field is set. Fourteen teams will be trimmed to two over the next three weeks, culminating in Super Bowl LX on Feb. 8 in Santa Clara, Calif. Albert Breer breaks down the field with help from executives and coaches.
• Breer goes inside Rodgers’s wild ride back to the postseason, plus more takeaways from the final week of the NFL regular season. 
• Conor Orr explores what went wrong with the Falcons and head coach Raheem Morris, and six candidates to replace him.
• The Browns had relative success and stability under head coach Kevin Stefanski, but he is now out after six seasons. Orr names seven candidates to replace him, including one wild card.
• Immediately after another crushing loss, head coach John Harbaugh showed how he has kept the Ravens competitive for 18 seasons, Orr writes.
• WNBA All-Stars Napheesa Collier and Breanna Stewart were tired of women’s basketball being treated like charity. Here’s Emma Baccellieri on how SI’s 2025 Innovators of the Year created a model for a sustainable start-up league.
• Tom Gott reports Manchester United has decided to fire under-performing manager Ruben Amorim after his spectacular rant over the weekend.
• Despite gutting its championship core following Jayson Tatum’s Achilles injury, Boston finds itself remarkably within striking distance of the top spot in the East, Chris Mannix writes.

The top five…

… things I saw yesterday: 
5. This one-handed touchdown catch by Tee Higgins. 
4. Devin Booker’s game-winner against the Thunder. 
3. Myles Garrett’s incredible burst on the sack that broke Michael Strahan and TJ Watt’s shared single-season record. (The NFL compiled all 23 of Garrett’s sacks in one video.)
2. Some impressive improvisation from Jaxson Dart, leading to a Giants touchdown. 
1. Lamar Jackson‘s elusiveness in the pocket on a clutch touchdown pass.