At 42, Aaron Rodgers is certainly no longer in his prime as he heads into his 22nd NFL season and his second with the Pittsburgh Steelers in 2026. What makes his case interesting, however, is the difference between how coaches and executives around the league view the veteran quarterback. According to The Athletic’s Mike Sando’s recent poll, Rodgers fell into Tier 3 of the 2026 QB Tiers. However, Sando later revealed that NFL coaches rated Rodgers much higher than executives did. Now, the analyst has explained the reasoning behind that difference.

“What’s interesting about Rodgers is that the coaches ranked him a lot higher than the personnel people,” said Sando. “The coaches like a guy who can run the whole show. You almost don’t have to coach him. He’s almost coaching your team, and he’s almost coaching your coaches. He’s coaching the referee when he’s out there, first name basis. But I think a personnel person is looking at it going, ‘This guy might not make it through the season. He can’t be our guy. He can’t get out of his own way. He can’t move.'”

Among the panelists who voted in 2026, only one ranked Rodgers in Tier 1, 19 in Tier 2, 26 in Tier 3, and four in Tier 4. But it’s not hard to understand why coaches would like a veteran quarterback like Aaron Rodgers to run their offense. Even at 42, Rodgers showed in 2025 that he could still operate an offense efficiently. He started all 16 games he played, throwing for 3,322 yards and 24 touchdowns against just 7 interceptions.

At the same time, Rodgers is not entering the 2026 season as a quarterback learning a new NFL language from scratch. He has spent years working with the Steelers head coach Mike McCarthy. That institutional familiarity only strengthens Sando’s point about why coaches might value Rodgers differently than personnel executives: he brings more than two decades of experience and an extensive understanding of how to operate an NFL offense.

Get The Huddle Newsletter. The day's biggest NFL stories — rivalries, matchups, expert analysis, power rankings, and insider draft news.

Across his career, Rodgers has combined high-end playmaking with unusual ball security. PFF noted that among quarterbacks with at least 1,000 dropbacks since it began charting NFL play in 2006, Rodgers ranked third in big-time throw rate (6.1%) and fourth in turnover-worthy play rate (2.2%).

At the same time, however, team personnel might have their own reasons for putting him in Tier 3, considering Rodgers’ durability concerns.

Take the 2023 season, for instance. Rodgers lost his entire season after tearing his Achilles four snaps into his New York Jets debut. While he successfully returned to start 17 games in 2024 and 16 more in 2025, he is now 42 and entering what he has said will be his final NFL season. For a personnel evaluator projecting forward, that makes age and physical durability unavoidable parts of the equation.

Sando’s blunt assessment of Rodgers’ mobility is also supported by how Pittsburgh used him. Rodgers averaged just 2.58 seconds before releasing the ball in 2025, one of the quickest marks in the league. PFF, meanwhile, specifically linked that approach to his mobility limitations. He managed only 12 scrambles for 68 yards during the season.

At the same time, Sando also mentioned Rodgers’ off-field personality as one of the reasons why a general manager may not like him.

“And by the way, when he goes on (Pat) McAfee and says whatever he’s going to say, what’s our owner going to think, right? I think the GM feels Rodgers differently,” Sando added.

Aaron Rodgers’ appearances on The Pat McAfee Show have dominated headlines multiple times and for all the wrong reasons. Still, the quarterback is now entering the final season of his NFL career. While it’s true that he was voted in Tier 3, Rodgers is still expected to end the Steelers’ postseason drought this year.