It is important to emphasize that McCarthy has never coached this version of Rodgers – not by a long shot.
McCarthy’s last season coaching Rodgers was in 2018. Rodgers was 35 in that season and still stupendously good at football. He was still moving well per Next Gen Stats’ charting and creating big plays against pressure. In fact, once he got Matt LaFleur’s offense under his belt, he started holding the ball longer and dabbling in more under-center play-action dropbacks. McCarthy’s offense had grown stale – he had tried rejuvenating the playbook in both 2016 and 2018 without much success – and Rodgers shined outside of it.
The Rodgers that McCarthy inherits now cannot do what that old Rodgers did. Yes, he can still change the plays at the line – but he won’t be able to bail the offense out of broken plays or create explosives on extended dropbacks. As such, McCarthy needs to build an offense that still gets the ball out of Rodgers’ hands quickly … but actually attacks all three levels of the field. This is much easier said than done. Last season’s Steelers devolved into a checkdown-checkdown-checkdown-checkdown-HEAVE operation that brokered no consistency.
