Ben Roethlisberger Drops Shocking Prediction: Aaron Rodgers’ Career Set to End in 2025—What It Could Mean for the NFL

Aaron Rodgers stepping into the Pittsburgh spotlight as Ben Roethlisberger’s successor has that unmistakable air of a fleeting chapter. Ben himself isn’t sugarcoating it—he reckons Rodgers might just have this one season left in the tank. After all, bouncing back from a brutal Achilles tear isn’t exactly a walk in the park, and having been through the wringer with my own elbow injury, I get that haze of false confidence followed by the stark truth of your limits. Rodgers, who kicked off all 17 games in 2024, is forging ahead, but the clock and those cumulative injuries inevitably cast long shadows. Not many signal-callers have danced deep into their 40s; Rodgers hits 42 this December, while Roethlisberger hung up his cleats at 39. Sure, Rodgers hasn’t declared a final curtain call, but it’s clear he’s chasing a storyline that redeems his less-than-stellar stint in New York. For the Steelers, the bar’s set at snapping their playoff drought—a feat eluded them through Ben’s twilight seasons and beyond. It’s a high-stakes gamble with hopes that this veteran’s last drive sparks something electric in Pittsburgh. LEARN MORE

Roethlisberger is hardly going out on a limb. Not many quarterbacks have played deep into their 40s. Rodgers turns 42 in December. (Roethlisberger retired at 39.)This year, Aaron Rodgers will become the latest successor to Ben Roethlisberger in Pittsburgh. And Roethlisberger believes it will be a one-year arrangement.Rodgers started all 17 games in 2024, a year after suffering a torn Achilles tendon on the fourth play of the first game of the season.For the Steelers, winning a playoff game seems to be the bare minimum to make the experiment a success. That’s something the team didn’t do in any of Roethlisberger’s five final seasons in football — or in the three since he retired.While he hasn’t said it, Rodgers’s main objective seems to be authoring a final chapter that has a better ending than his two-year detour to New York. For him, making the playoffs would do the trick.

“He’s going to feel better, but it doesn’t mean that he’s going to have two or three years left,” Roethlisberger said. “I think this might be his last go.”“I don’t think he’s got much more after this year,” Roethlisberger said on his Footbahlin with Ben Roethlisberger podcast, via Andrew Vasquez of USA Today. “I think this might be it for him — personally. I have no reason — you could ask, ‘Well, how do you know?’ I don’t know. I’m just guessing in terms of you coming off an Achilles [tear]. Coming off my elbow [injury], my first year back I felt like I was 100. I wasn’t even — you don’t realize you’re not 100 until the next year when you are 100.”