Mike McCarthy Wants Aaron Rodgers Playing 30 or 40 Preseason Snaps, Against the Packers and Jets

Aaron Rodgers said Monday that Steelers head coach Mike McCarthy wants him on the field for Pittsburgh's first two preseason games, and specifically for something in the range of 30 or 40 plays. Rodgers, by his own account, is willing without being enthusiastic. He said he told McCarthy that if the coach wants him to play, he will play, while adding that he is not saying he wants to do it.

McCarthy has not signed off yet. His public position is that the decision gets made closer to the games, that he would like to see Rodgers play, and that a quarterback's preseason usage involves more moving parts than a single player's availability. That is the standard coaching hedge, and it is worth taking at face value: nothing has been committed.

The schedule is what makes the story interesting rather than routine. Pittsburgh's first two preseason opponents are Green Bay and the New York Jets, the two franchises Rodgers played for before this one. A quarterback in the back half of his career being asked to take meaningful preseason reps is unusual on its own. Being asked to take them against both of his former teams is the kind of coincidence that turns exhibition football into an actual event.

Why a coach would want this

Preseason snaps for established starting quarterbacks have been trending toward zero across the league for a decade, and for defensible reasons. The injury risk is real, the evaluative value is low, and offensive installation happens in practice regardless.

McCarthy's calculus appears to be different, and the likely reason is timing rather than evaluation. Rodgers is in his second season working inside McCarthy's structure in Pittsburgh, but the supporting cast around him has moved. The backfield picture has shifted through camp, with Rico Dowdle taking first-team work ahead of Jaylen Warren in recent sessions. The receiving group has its own questions. Live reps against an opposing defense, with real pass rush and unscripted coverage, are the only way to test whether the timing that looks fine in a controlled practice actually holds.

Thirty to forty plays is also a specific number, and it is more than a token series. That is roughly two and a half to three drives worth of work, enough to run the offense through a full script rather than the opening package.

Fantasy fallout

The direct fantasy consequence of preseason snaps is close to zero. Nobody scores points in August. The indirect consequence is information, and information in the second week of August is worth more than it is at almost any other point in the fantasy calendar, because drafts are happening right now.

The first thing to watch is personnel groupings. If Rodgers plays three series, the players on the field with him are the players Pittsburgh intends to use in Week 1, and that answers the backfield question more definitively than any beat report will. Dowdle running with the first team in a preseason game alongside Rodgers, rather than in a Tuesday practice, is a materially stronger signal about the Steelers' opening-day plan.

The second is the pass-catcher hierarchy. Pittsburgh's target distribution is one of the murkier situations on any 2026 board, and the receiver Rodgers looks for on third down in a live game is a better indicator than a training-camp highlight. Managers drafting a Steelers pass catcher this week are guessing. Managers drafting after these two games will not be.

The third is risk. Every additional snap Rodgers takes in an exhibition game is a snap where something can go wrong. His fantasy value is not high enough for that risk to be a major consideration for most managers, but anyone drafting him as a late-round starting quarterback should recognize that his August exposure is higher than his peers'.

The Verdexed model take

Our model does not project preseason games and does not weight preseason results. What it does weight is depth-chart certainty, and preseason usage is one of the highest-quality inputs available for resolving it.

Pittsburgh currently carries one of the widest uncertainty bands of any offense in our projections, because the backfield split, the target distribution, and the offensive line configuration are all unresolved simultaneously. That uncertainty does not change our central projection for the Steelers' scoring output, but it widens the range around it substantially, and a wide range is exactly what makes an offense hard to bet and hard to draft.

If Rodgers plays 30 to 40 snaps across two games with something close to the intended starting group, that band narrows meaningfully before Week 1 lines are set. That is worth more to a bettor than anything the scoreboard says in those games.

Betting angle

Preseason sides and totals are the worst-priced markets in football, and they are worst-priced precisely because playing time is unknowable. A public declaration that a starting quarterback intends to play multiple series is one of the few genuine edges available in those markets, and it tends to be available early before books adjust.

The caution is that McCarthy has explicitly not committed. Betting a preseason total on the assumption that Rodgers plays 40 snaps, before the coach has confirmed it, is betting on a quote rather than a plan. The disciplined version is to wait for the Friday injury and availability reporting and then act, accepting a worse number in exchange for actually knowing.

For the regular season, the relevant market is Pittsburgh's team total in the opening weeks. An offense whose starting quarterback gets three live drives of preseason work should be sharper in September than one whose quarterback takes none, and that difference is not priced into any Week 1 number.

What to do in your league

If your draft is this week, do not chase Steelers skill players. The backfield and the target hierarchy are both unresolved, and paying full price for uncertainty is a bad trade.

If your draft is after the middle of August, the opposite applies. The player who emerges from those two preseason games as the clear first-team back or the clear primary target will be available at a price set before the information existed, and that gap is where drafts are won.

Rodgers himself remains a streaming-tier quarterback rather than a weekly starter in one-quarterback formats. Nothing about his preseason plan changes that. What it changes is how confidently you can draft the players around him.

What's next

McCarthy said the decision comes closer to the games, which means the real answer arrives in the days before Pittsburgh's preseason opener rather than now. Watch for two things: whether Rodgers is listed as available, and which players take the field with him on the first snap. The second one is the one that shows up in your lineup in September.