Albert Breer’s Takeaways: Aaron Rodgers' Return Comes With a Revitalized Passion for the Game Itself

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Aaron Rodgers
International games
Super Bowl LXIV destination
NFL Accelerator Program
Miami Dolphins
Cleveland Browns
Minnesota Vikings
John Harbaugh's inspiring words
NFL streaming
Quick-hitters

The MMQB Takeaways is here, and we have a lot more ground to cover than I anticipated during what’s supposed to be a sleepy stretch of May ….

Aaron Rodgers

We covered Aaron Rodgers’s situation pretty thoroughly last week, so you know where I stand: 1) Rodgers can still play, though not to the level he did at his peak; and 2) The Steelers, based on the construction of their roster, more or less had to go forward with him.

But I do think this one goes beyond that.

It’s my belief that Rodgers is back in Pittsburgh because the Steelers helped him rekindle his love of football.

I’ve told this story before, but here goes … A couple years ago, I sat down with the four-time NFL MVP, and he explained to me that, going into what would be his final year as a Jet, he wanted to lean into being a football player again. He knew his time in the game was fleeting, so he wanted to make the most of it. He was no longer concerned with proving to everyone he was more than an athlete. Instead, he’d push his energy into appreciating everything about the sport.

It didn’t quite work out that fall. The Jets’ 2-3 start—through which they opened the season in San Francisco on a Monday night, the first of three games in 10 days, then went to London in Week 5—got Robert Saleh fired. The team then went 1-9 in the 10 games after that, which got GM Joe Douglas fired. And Rodgers was left still looking for what he started the season so desperately in search of.

But he found that last year in Pittsburgh playing for Mike Tomlin. The season didn’t play out the way anyone wanted, but he told everyone in the organization—all the way up to ownership—over the last few months how much fun he had in 2025 and, more to the point, how much he enjoyed playing football again. That, he would tell them, is why he wanted another year as a Steeler.

It wasn’t about writing a final chapter or some farewell tour. It was simpler than that. He just wanted to play, having found what he was looking for at the end of what seemed like a cursed two-year run in New York.

So for some time now, the Steelers, who’ve earned his trust, have known he was coming back in 2026. The same way last year he was in touch with Tomlin and then-OC Arthur Smith, this year he kept new coach Mike McCarthy, his old friend from Green Bay, and GM Omar Khan in the loop. In fact, if anything, he was more communicative this year.

Rodgers and McCarthy settled on the start of OTAs, which is today for the Steelers, as the jumping-off point, which allowed Rodgers to spend time at home, and also give McCarthy and the offensive coaches time to work with second-year man Will Howard a little more intentionally, to get a better idea of what they have with the 2025 sixth-rounder.

The 42-year-old future Hall of Famer came back to the city 10 days ago or so to get back in his house, get around his teammates socially and get comfortable ahead of getting back to work.

The financials still had to be worked through. He made $13.65 million in base pay last year, which was a major discount, and got that number just past $15 million after hitting a few incentives. This time around, he’ll get a nice bump, including a $22 million fully guaranteed base salary, per sources, and another $3 million in roster bonuses and incentives that can get him to $25 million, the number that Tom Brady and Drew Brees were getting at the very end of their careers.

And with that done, Rodgers can just go out and play.

Which, again, is what I really do believe this season is all about for him.

International games

The NFL’s fascination with going to foreign countries is going nowhere. This year, that fascination will take the league back to London for three games, back to Madrid, Mexico City and Munich, and to Rio de Janeiro, Paris and Melbourne for the first time.

At the league’s spring meeting in Orlando on Tuesday, owners will vote to push the number of league-run international games from eight to 10 for the 2027 season. The total of nine this year folds in the Jaguars’ game at Wembley, which is negotiated and run by the team, which means we could have 11 international games next year.

It’s complicated making it all work, even more so when there’s one basically every week—the league has a game in a foreign country in nine of the first 11 weeks of the 2026 season, with Week 2 and Week 8 standing as the exceptions. But this push has long been a point of emphasis for the owners, who believe that domestic growth has been pushed to a limit to where their next wave of growth will come in foreign currency.

Which is to say, this push is here to stay.

Last week, as I talked to the NFL’s EVP of media distribution Hans Schroeder about how the 2026 NFL schedule was built, he conceded that, as the league maps out its schedule, there are complications to work through.

“A lot of the work on these international games is really behind the scenes, making sure we've been to the venues and we know how to produce the game in the best possible way from each venue, and the diligence and the work that going to a new stadium takes,” he said. “We want to make sure we're going to present it for our fans in the best possible way.

“And, certainly, then you go to somewhere like Australia and really learning about what it's like to play in a game in Australia in Week 1. What do you learn from that? And we'll probably have a lot of learning coming out on the other end of it. But those are things that leave us even more excited about our ability to continue to grow the global games.”

The NFL has become quite popular in many foreign cities, such as Munich, Germany. | Kirby Lee-Imagn Images

If there’s one good sign of how the NFL’s trying to normalize global play, this might be it: Sixteen teams are playing internationally in 2026, and whereas having a bye coming off an international series game used to be required, this year only three of those 16 are getting their bye as they come home from a game abroad, and one of those three, the Jaguars, get it only after playing two games in London. The Niners actually are playing the next week twice after international games.

So very clearly, everyone is being conditioned for this. And the likelihood is that whenever the NFL goes to 18 games, there’ll be a 16-game international package that’ll mean every team plays an international game every year (likely rotating between home and away).

Another sign of the emphasis here is the magnitude of the matchups. Pivotal division games between the Niners and Rams, as well as Jags-Texans are being shipped overseas.

All of it shows just how important it is to the owners to make a dent in other countries.

So where will they go to next? My guess is we’ll probably get another city in Australia (Sydney?), maybe another city in Spain (Barcelona?), and I’d bet that places like Japan, Italy and the Middle East, with Saudi Arabia having shown interest, aren’t far off.

Which will only further show how serious the league is about all this.

Super Bowl LXIV destination

Among the other voting matters to consider in Orlando will be Nashville potentially closing the deal on Super Bowl LXIV. My buddy Dan Patrick reported a while back that the Titans’ sparkling new Nissan Stadium, set to open in 2027, was being lined up to host the February 2030 Super Bowl, and sure enough the site for that Super Bowl is on the agenda for a potential vote this week.

These things are rubber-stampings, and a contingent from Nashville is headed for Florida for the occasion, so I’d expect a news conference on that Tuesday.

I’ll be interested to see what sort of host city Nashville will be. I love that area. I have a good buddy from college who moved there when we were all in our 20s, when it wasn’t what it is now, and I’ve been back a ton for work and otherwise. I've seen its incredible growth. I also know it has become a home for events, which has been part of that growth.

But it’ll be interesting to see what a Super Bowl will look like there. One thing I’ve noticed there in recent years is how bad the traffic can get, which, it was pointed out to me, is a sign that the city’s infrastructure is struggling a bit to keep pace with the increased population. That, of course, is about big-picture stuff—like the number of big highways you have running through the city relative to the number of cars on those roads.

Also, it’s still small for a Super Bowl city. It’s America’s 26th-largest market, one spot behind Indianapolis and one spot ahead of Pittsburgh. Only four markets outside the top 25 have hosted Super Bowls before. Two, New Orleans and Las Vegas, are cities where tourism and events are at the foundation of the area’s commerce. The third, San Diego, has since lost its NFL team. And the fourth, Jacksonville, was a one-off host and it didn’t go great.

Indianapolis is the only other market outside the top 18 to host one—and to Indy’s credit, that one was fantastic. Much of that was due to the downtown infrastructure Indy has as a hub for conventions, and Nashville, to its credit, has some of those built-in edges, too. Even Vegas struggled with the crush of people and traffic.

So we’ll see how it goes. I’m looking forward to it because I really like it there, but there will be some interesting challenges for the people of Nashville to tackle.

NFL Accelerator Program

Last week’s reports about the NFL's coaching Accelerator Program was a little confusing. First, I’d like to say I think the NFL’s heart really has been in the right place with this initiative. It started in 2022 as a way of bridging the gap for minority coaching and GM candidates who had long heard that a hiring team was simply “more comfortable” with another guy. The idea was to educate, sure, but mostly just get bright young football minds facetime with the owners so they’d have an opportunity to get those owners an idea of who they were, for better or worse.

To what degree it has worked is debatable, but the people I’ve talked to who went through it generally appreciated it. Then, last year, the program was put on hold. The league’s official stance was that it was to rethink the program, but there were some who pointed to the current administration’s anti-DEI position, and the league needing the justice department to push ESPN’s purchase of its television network over the goal line.

Now it’s coming back. Here’s the list of those confirmed to be in Orlando this week for the revamped Accelerator Progam …

• Coaches: Falcons DC Jeff Ulbrich, Bengals OC Dan Pitcher, Cowboys OC Klayton Adams, Broncos STC Darren Rizzi, Lions OPGC Mike Kafka, Lions PGS David Shaw, Texans OC Nick Caley, Colts DPGC Chris Hewitt, Jaguars OC Grant Udinski, Chiefs OC Eric Bieniemy, Rams OC Nathan Scheelhaase, Vikings OPGC Josh McCown, Patriots AHC Terrell Williams, Seahawks DC Aden Durde and Commanders DC Daronte Jones.

• Front Office: Bills AGM Terrance Gray, Browns AGM Glenn Cook, Browns AGM Catherine Hickman, Broncos DPP Cam Williams, Packers DFO Milt Hendrickson, Texans AGM Chris Blanco, Texans AGM James Liipfert, Chiefs AGM Mike Bradway, Chargers AGM Chad Alexander, Rams AGM John McKay, Giants AGM Brandon Brown, Eagles AGM Adam Berry, 49ers AGM RJ Gillen , 49ers DFO Josh Williams, Seahawks AGM Nolan Teasley, Buccaneers AGM Mike Greenberg, Titans VPPP Dan Saganey and Commanders AGM Lance Newmark.

So, first, the obvious change is that six of the 14 coaches attending and eight of the 18 front-office people there are white men. You also have some older guys in the mix, such as Hendrickson and Williams, and some repeat visitors. And the coaches and front-office guys are mashed together, whereas in the past the coaches had their own Accelerator at the league’s spring meeting (this one), then front-office folks were at the since-discontinued December meeting.

Also, in the past, owners were asked to come in a day early to attend a cocktail hour with the participants and get to know them a little better. With the league cutting this meeting down to a single day (Tuesday), they now have an optional breakfast with the candidates then a mandatory lunch, which is wedged into the schedule between 12:30 and 2.

Again, I think the league office really wants to make this work. But it does feel like they’ve been twisted into a pretzel, whether it's because some owners lost interest, the issue with the NFL Network merger or something else. This all feels like it’s a little thrown together as a result.

I’m open-minded on how it goes. I do hope there’s a real effort from the guys in charge on Tuesday because their participation is really what’s most valuable to the guys involved in it.

Miami Dolphins

There may not be a more consequential draft class this year than the one new Dolphins GM Jon-Eric Sullivan and coach Jeff Hafley put together. That’s not, by the way, to say it’s going to be the best class or the deepest class or anything like that. It might become that. It might prove to fall well short of that. We’ll see.

Instead, it's more about impact.

The Dolphins’ decision to pair Packer expats Sullivan and Hafley after cleaning house in January was driving most at fixing Miami’s failure in recent years to find and develop homegrown talent. No one is better than Green Bay in that area historically, and the new guys leaned in on getting younger right away with the trade of Jaylen Waddle, with the return from Denver pushing Miami’s draft total to seven picks in the Top 100 alone.

After some maneuvering, Miami ended up with 13 picks overall, including six in the first three rounds, eight in the first four and a staggering 11 in the first five. And the one thing that Sullivan and Hafley tried to emphasize and not bend on with those picks was fit.

They wanted gritty, team-first players with demonstrated on-field production.

I knew some of that before the draft, and it’s why I scratched my head a little when they took Kadyn Proctor, the Alabama tackle, 12th overall. Proctor had issues keeping his weight in check in Tuscaloosa, and had a rep for a guy who carried himself like a superstar.

And this, to me, is where Sullivan’s background in Green Bay, and in particular on the college trail, became a commodity. Through a trusted, longtime friend of his at Alabama, a different picture of Proctor was painted for the Dolphins. The words “competitive” and “prideful” kept coming up. Yes, Proctor had gained weight, and it bothered him that he let it happen,but most importantly, he did something about it.

Proctor went to Miami on a 30 visit and acknowledged and took responsibility for what happened—and promised he wasn’t going back to that weight. Which bolstered Miami’s feeling that it was a one-time problem, and Proctor was the kind of guy who’d respond when challenged.

The Dolphins felt strongly enough about it going into the draft that, on the Thursday afternoon of the first round, Sullivan off-handedly remarked to assistant GM Kyle Smith, “Wouldn’t it be cool if we wound up with Proctor and Johnson.” Johnson was San Diego State cornerback Chris Johnson—a very clean prospect in a class of flawed DBs, with the three-position flexibility to play corner, nickel and safety—and, yup, the Dolphins got him too.

After that, they got: a couple linebackers, Texas Tech’s Jacob Rodriguez and Louisville’s Kyle Louis, who epitomize the character traits Miami was seeking; a couple guys in Texas DE Trey Moore and Ohio State TE Will Kacmarek who transferred up (from UTSA and Ohio, respectively) to find better competition and fulfill their potential; and a bunch of others with the grit and passion for football they were looking for.

Now, it probably won’t result in a ton of wins for Miami in 2026. They, of course, just aren’t at that point yet. But the hope is they’ll be a pain to play against, and full of guys who should be around for a while.

Cleveland Browns

There’s going to be a lot of noise around the Browns quarterback situation, but I do believe HC Todd Monken’s going to be fair about it. What does that mean? To me, it means no one’s getting anointed. The best man will win. And the cool thing about it is if you look at the new Browns coach’s history, he has enough schematic clubs in his bag to make it work for whoever he picks—be it Deshaun Watson, Shedeur Sanders or whoever else.

New Browns head coach has a tough decision to make at the QB position. | Ken Blaze-Imagn Images

Monken’s bio can tell you that. He worked with David Garrard in Jacksonville, Brandon Weeden at Oklahoma State, Nick Mullens at Southern Miss, Jameis Winston and Ryan Fitzpatrick in Tampa Bay, Baker Mayfield the first time around in Cleveland, Stetson Bennett IV at Georgia and Lamar Jackson in Baltimore. That is a wide swath of QBs.

He can build an offense for whoever wins that job.

And, yes, I think the Browns would like to get one last long look at the quarterback they’re spending $230 million on and forked over three first-round picks for, now that Watson is back and healthy. Similarly, it’d make sense to have a full-and-thorough idea of who Sanders, Dillon Gabriel and even Taylen Green are ahead of what could be a franchise-shifting offseason in 2027, with the team potentially lining up another big swing at getting the quarterback position right once and for all next April.

The good news is I think Monken can get all of that done—and do it in a fair way, that’ll give each of the guys a fair shot, which should also send a good message to the rest of the team.

Minnesota Vikings

The Vikings’ GM search could take a bit. Minnesota has now worked through a list of eight candidates, interviewing assistant GMs from the 49ers (Gillen), Bills (Gray), Broncos (Reed Burckhardt), Dolphins (Kyle Smith), Lions (Agnew), Rams (McKay), Seahawks (Teasley), Titans (Dave Ziegler) over Zoom last week, as well as interim GM Rob Brzezinski.

The interviews lasted about an hour, with owner Mark Wilf and coach Kevin O’Connell running the show and COO Andrew Miller and others from the Wilf management group taking part as well. They covered some big-picture topics and drilled down on how candidates saw their team.

The plan is for the Vikings to regroup today to map out the coming weeks.

The trouble is this is a bit of a busy week for the franchise. The expectation is that the Twin Cities will be awarded the 2028 draft at the meetings, so a big contingent, including ownership, will be in Orlando for that. And with a holiday weekend coming up, there’s a good chance in-person interviews with finalists for the job won’t happen until next week.

Without competition for candidates out there—the Vikings are the only team looking for a GM—Minnesota can afford to be patient. That said, there’s also an acknowledgment there that it’d be good to get the new GM in soon so he can get started with O’Connell before the summer break commences in mid-June.

John Harbaugh's inspiring words

Our guy Peter King loved going over graduation speeches from across the country this time of year, so I figured this was a good place to acknowledge a message one of those delivered over the weekend. The guy giving that graduation speech was none other than new Giants coach John Harbaugh, who was speaking at his alma mater, Miami of Ohio. He used his own offseason as the jumping-off point for this particular message.

A full-circle moment ❤️

John Harbaugh ’84 returned to Miami University to celebrate the Class of 2026 and deliver the keynote address.

“As Miami graduates, who has it better than us? Nobody.” 🙌#MiamiOH #LoveAndHonor pic.twitter.com/fLCNZH8Mn2
— Miami University (@miamiuniversity) May 16, 2026

“There’s gonna be tough times, they’re gonna show up, too,” he told the graduates. “You might get a call with some bad news, maybe about your job—maybe they’ll you they don’t want you anymore! It’s time to move on! That happens! In those moments, I hope you’ll find resilience, and that you’ll be able to rejoice in all the good you still have, and all the people who still care for you, and you’ll come to understand that there’s a great opportunity on the next horizon of your life, and that you can still walk together into every uncertain future with the people that you love.

“I learned some really important things about success, great lessons. I’d like to share one with you. It’s a superpower, really, about the amazing power of caring and encouragement. Have you heard of those? And the incredible blessing that follows.

“About 25 years ago, I took the time and made an intention to tell a little child how special they must be for their dad to bring them out to practice that day; they were visiting a summer practice. I saw a big smile light up a little face, and it kind of surprised me.

“Since then, all those years ago, I’ve encouraged our players to get on kids at eye level and tell them something, anything, that makes them feel good about who they are. Doesn’t have to be a child, either. I remind our players, the person you’re speaking to might remember that encouragement for the rest of their life, and it might make them smile inside, too, just like that little girl. There’s something wonderful about being able to lift people up around you, would you agree? Have you found that to be true? It’s a great gift, it’s a great gift to give someone. You might remember it, when someone gave you that gift, maybe the people sitting in the stands right there. And I’ll bet when you do remember it, you think about it, I bet you smile inside. I know I do.

“Most of us want to feel a sense of purpose, want to make our mark. Maybe you want to make a difference, do you? Have an impact? Be remembered some day? In my experience, the most profound way to do those things is to let caring for others be at the heart of what you do. So just imagine for one minute, if you step out of your comfort zone, take a little chance, tell one person, just one person, that you see something special in them—what if you said something like, ‘You know, I’ve noticed something about you, something that I admire, and it’s an amazing thing.’ Imagine how that person might feel when you said that to them. Just think about how you might feel if they said that to you.”

“What’ll happen when you take that chance? Think they’ll be surprised? They might say thanks, they might smile. Who knows? But I guarantee you they will remember it, they will cherish it. What’s more, they will remember you for a long time, maybe for the rest of their life. You will have given that person a great gift. And what will it cost you? It won’t cost you anything. Now imagine again what if you did that once a year. Once a year, you thought about doing that, how many lives would you impact? How about once a month? What if you were really intentional, what if you made this idea a part of who you are? What if you decided once a week, you would be intentional about finding someone who could use a lift. That would be 52 times a year, 520 a decade.

“How many in your lifetime? How many people would remember you? And that’s only one a week. And what would you get back? I dare say, if you choose to think this way going forward, and to act this way going forward, all those dreams you have as you sit there will come true and much, much more. That child we spoke of, all those years ago, 26 years ago, was a little girl visiting practice with her dad. Her dad passed away a few years later while chaperoning a school trip. She’s now the mom of the cutest little boy you’ve ever seen and one of our closest family friends. See, that’s the beauty of it all. That’s the great irony of life—when you decide to think about others, just for the sake of others, it comes back to you many times over.

“And I promise, even in that one moment, when you see the smile or hear the thank you or just see the surprised look, you will feel great. And something inside of you that you didn’t even necessarily know was there will start to grow. And that’s when you will begin to understand, looking back, what you’re looking for today, what it all meant, and that is a great gift.”

What a wonderful message.

NFL streaming

One last thing on the NFL’s messaging around streaming: I think it’d help them if they’d just be honest with this stuff. It’s getting more expensive, not less expensive, to be a rabid football fan. Yes, there’s more available to all of us than ever before. But there’s also more hands in all of your proverbial pockets, looking for the next dollar.

If you go back 10 years, with a standard cable subscription, most people got 3-4 games on a Sunday, Sunday Night Football, Monday Night Football, Thursday Night Football and then occasional Saturday or holiday games. Then, if you wanted to level up, you’d order Sunday Ticket, which effectively gave you all 256 regular-season games. Simple. Clean. Pricy. But easy.

In 2026, TNF requires a separate subscription, there are another five games on Netflix, all of which have been plucked from Sunday (hurting the value of Sunday Ticket), as have a couple Saturday games that wind up on Peacock. Which means that today, you essentially need five subscriptions, rather than two, to get the games, and that’s without even factoring in what sports' rights have done to your cable bill.

Look, if we can all look at this like grownups, you’ll understand it’s a business, we’re all effectively the proverbial junkies for the sport and the NFL has the drugs. These are businessmen trying to squeeze every dollar out of the product. It’s how they have chosen to approach it, clearly.

I could just do without the PR spin. It’d be easier to swallow all this if they’d just own it.

Quick-hitters

• De’Von Achane’s four-year, $64 million extension is a worthwhile one for the Dolphins, in that he gives the coaching staff a player to build around in their post-Tyreek Hill/Jaylen Waddle world. As we said earlier, this is an extensive rebuild that Sullivan and Hafley are undertaking. Achane helps them provide optimism for the players already on hand.

• I think Shedeur Sanders will be better off if father Deion leaves well enough alone and allows for his son to set his own path with a new coaching staff.

• Patriots WR Kayshon Boutte, I think, could be had for a fifth- or sixth-round pick right now, if anyone has an interest in him.

• I still think it’s tough that the Rams and Packers won’t have true bye weeks.

• The Eli Manning 2004 trade demand makes a lot more sense now that I heard the Chargers brass took him to the restaurant in the Marriott, in New Orleans of all places. I like a burger and wings at Champions Square as much as the next guy, but …

• CeeDee Lamb won’t be the last player to see the real stuff in his home stadium over the next two months and ask his team to keep the grass post-World Cup.

• The Titans’ schedule-release video was, in my opinion, the best of the bunch this year.

• I love this twist: Atlanta will be playing in New Orleans right around the 20th anniversary of Steve Gleason’s blocked punt in the Saints’ post-Katrina return to the Superdome. That’s a good job by the league.

• I don’t think I’d be too concerned about Giants WR Malik Nabers’ cleanup surgery yet because that sort of cleanup isn’t uncommon. But it’s obviously not ideal, and it’ll be interesting to see how he looks at the beginning of the year as a result of all this.

• We’re now two weeks from June 1. Which, of course, is an important date to facilitate trades and such.

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