16 Things We Learned: Aaron Rodgers Returns, Saints Priorities and Boutte in A.J. Brown Trade?

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2:50Welcome to NFL Daily, where we're kind of, sort of thinking football is a little back. There's eight teams practicing on a football field on Monday. OTAs starting. A couple more teams starting later in this week. And you know the week is back when we're finding out things we learned. We got 16 things we learned this week, Chuck. That's actually a few less things than last weekend when we did this Monday show.

3:16Nick Shook:Nobody is better at finding things we learned at this time of year than you. The sicko himself, Greg Rosenthal. Okay. I mean, I know you were busy celebrating the Cavs game seven victory, but I'm out here in the streets. And yeah, we got a lot of responses last week that people like these offseason shows. Most people, they kind of want to tune out from football. So it's just going to be a quick and dirty way to kind of get up to speed on what's going on in the NFL. We might do another show just like this later this week, me and you, Shooky. But we had some big news over the weekend. Not a surprise that Aaron Rodgers is back with the Steelers, but he officially signed with Pittsburgh in advance of their first OTA.

3:58So the timing of it, not a coincidence there. He is on the field taking first team reps. More on that in a second. I thought the finances were interesting. He does get a pretty significant raise over what he had last year. The base salary is about$22,$23 million. Incentives can go up to$25 million. We have reached the end of the Aaron Rodgers, Willier, Wonty section of the offseason. And that's, again, another reason why you can indicate football is back.

4:29Nick Shook:This is what I now like to refer to as our great long national perennial nightmare is over. Finally, we can stop spending weeks, months, That's asking Steelers ownership and, you know, general manager Omar Khan and now Mike McCarthy, the new coach. Is Aaron Rodgers going to be there? What's the timeline look like? We can stop filling some time with, is he going to come back and play football or is he done? It always felt like this was the case. This is how they always planned it. They kind of hedged against it a little bit by drafting Drew Aller, which kind of creates a log jam now that Aaron Rodgers is there that I'm sure we're going to get into.

5:04Nick Shook:But ultimately, we get the solution that we needed so that we could all move forward. I wouldn't call it closure. I would say we finally checked the box. We buckled our seatbelt. Now let's drive down the road already. Yeah, and I think it's a bad idea. I thought it was a bad idea last year. He was a little better a year ago than I expected. And that's why I thought it was a bad idea, because even though he was a little better, he was so limited. Some stats for you, Shook. And Steelers fans, and especially the guys who seem to be closer to Rodgers and the Steelers media keep making the case that he's like an average starting quarterback or better, that he did a lot of good things for them last year.

5:42And I'm like, he just didn't want his career to end with a pick six against the Texans. Here are some of his stats. 33rd in the league in average depth of target. So just a limited menu of how he's going to throw the ball. 23rd in the league in EPA per play. 26th in success rate. Here's the one that really stuck out to me. This was from Ben Solak. when pressured his off target rate was the fourth worst of any quarterback in any season in five years and those were the numbers that I really went to when pressured his EPA per play any other stat success rate was down there with Flacco and Cam Ward as the worst two quarterbacks in the league so do you think ultimately that the Steelers are making a mistake by making this

6:29Nick Shook:their offseason plan no um and it's because they backed themselves into this corner and this was their only option i thought that they should have made a push for malik willis that obviously didn't pan out i thought that would be a better long-term play for them than going back to aaron rogers but i felt like this was always going to be what they were going to do and i understand kyler kyler was out there kyler i felt that i don't think that there was a real shot at that either i think that the kyler kevin o 'connell connection that he was on a one-way track to minnesota that happened really quickly too it i understand why steelers fans and maybe some of the beat think that like he was an average quarterback because their frame of reference is not great they had to deal with kenny pickett they had to deal with the russell wilson and justin fields experience and rogers was better than all of those guys and he played well enough for me to think he could probably do it one more time it's not that he's elevating them to some new level though he's just bringing them up to competence offensively and the bar was very low so i understand why they looked at this market they looked at this draft class and they thought all right well let's run it back with him one more year if there's mutual interest plus you have the history with mike mccarthy do i think it's actually going to produce anything better than what they got last year no i don't and it's because of what you just explained uh you talk about um how bad he was when he was pressured he never was pressured though and when he was pressured it was only because there was nobody open he was doing the get the ball out in like 2.3 seconds consistently i was just actually pulling up the next gen stats because i wanted to see time to throw and i know he was near the top of the league when it came to shortest time to throw.

7:58Nick Shook:And it's because that was the way their entire offense was designed, which I think if you look at last season, you probably feel, well, they kind of underutilized DK Metcalf save for that game in Dublin. And that's because they never gave him time to get down the field really, unless it was third and long. And they had to, because they were such a quick, get the ball out offense. Cause they knew he was limited in how he was able to navigate the pocket. Like he used to do with the Packers. So again, lower ceiling, but I understand given the circumstances around this, why they do it. I just don't think it's going to be any better than it was last year.

8:27Here's the case for it. Obviously, he'd have to just play better at, what, 43 years old, which is hard to do. The offensive line could be pretty promising. It's a young, improving offensive line. Max Ihanachor might be stepping in there at one of the tackle spots. You have Fautanu, Frazier in the middle. It's intriguing. Michael Pittman is now your wide receiver, too. That is a huge upgrade on Calvin Austin or whoever they were throwing out there last year. Jeremy Bernard. It's a rookie from Alabama that you never know. But at least in terms of his draft profile and what he does, seems like a pretty good fit with Aaron Rodgers.

9:09Like a reliable, going to be in the right spot player that you can throw to over the middle. So the other argument would be the defense is just better, which kind of gets me at my point about the Steelers. Like, I almost see the win now vision. They just need a quarterback. Like when Mike McCarthy was hired, I think he sold them on like, we can win with this team. And if they actually, let's say you put Jordan Love on this team, just while I'm thinking of former Rodgers teammates. It's like, yeah, I could see that team making some real noise. And the defense could be better. And Mike McCarthy could be a better offensive coach to help get the most out of Aaron Rodgers.

9:49It's just wild to me that it's 2026 and we're doing Mike McCarthy and Aaron Rodgers again. And the only man quoted in the Pittsburgh press release about this was not Mike McCarthy, was not Aaron Rodgers. It was a man by the name of Tom Arth. Are you familiar with Tom Arth? I am very familiar with Tom Arth.

10:09Nick Shook:Tom Arth went to Cleveland St. Ignatius High School, played football at John Carroll University, which is in University Heights, just outside of Cleveland, and was the head coach at the university of akron for three years before he went to the nfl he was once on the roster with aaron rogers which i don't remember he was like the i don't remember that either fourth yeah i think he was in a training camp or something like that um and so a former teammate we should have known this you know a former teammate of aaron rogers who i don't even think made the packers he was like a practice squad or got cut type of guy back with mccarthy and that is uh the guy who's given quotes about how great Rodgers is going to be.

10:45And yeah, I think they have a chance to be competitive because I think if Rodgers just plays about at the level that he was a year ago, the defense has a chance to be better. And I do think McCarthy is actually an upgrade on Arthur Smith. So we'll see. Someone's going to be the odd man out, though. You mentioned the quarterback situation. Will Howard was taking QB2 reps. This is how I know football's back. They were telling me the order of the reps at Monday's OTAs. I don't put anything into that, but Will Howard was two and Mason Rudolph was three. And then Drew Aller, the rookie was four. Wow.

11:20So actually that kind of maybe tells me a little bit of something that, that, uh, that Mason Rudolph is not long for this roster.

11:27Nick Shook:I just feel like he's probably the odd man out. I think it depends on who you talk to, who follows the Steelers closely, because there's, I think a split in that group right now between, uh, Will Howard and Mason Rudolph, because you think about if it's a win now approach, then you want a veteran like Mason Rudolph behind Aaron Rodgers in case of emergency. You don't want to have to lean on a sixth round pick who didn't see the field last year or a rookie third round pick as your backups to Aaron Rodgers. But I also believe that the Steelers are looking at this in the longer term picture because they have their stopgap at quarterback in Rodgers.

11:58Nick Shook:They understand this is the best that they could do. But they talked very highly about Will Howard and they really pumped him up and I didn't buy it. And drafting Drew Aller tells me that maybe it was, you know, kind of a little bit of smoke. but I think that when they look at their franchise planning, they would like to have both of those options to develop, especially under McCarthy, as opposed to keeping Mason Rudolph. So as it stands right now, if I had to lean in one direction, I would say that they're going to try to find a trade partner for Mason Rudolph at one point this summer, unless Will Howard is just terrible and can't because Aller's not going anywhere.

12:30Nick Shook:By the way, also, I looked it up real quick. Rogers last year, time to throw the fastest of any quarterback with 200 or more dropbacks 2.59 seconds that was their shortened offense right there so maybe with the improved offensive line they could be a little bit longer but I think they're still limited well and the reason why his numbers were so bad when pressured because for the most part he just wasn't even trying he's just throwing them all away I mean he would kind of throw it somewhat near someone occasionally and there were times when he would try to make plays and that was where he kind of had the, oh, I'm older.

13:05And then he kind of just stopped even trying. And so there's a route to this team being competitive and being interesting. It's just a smaller route than you want. Mason Rudolph's due about$3 million this year. I could see them putting him on the practice squad and seeing if anyone doesn't take him and then they can just keep four quarterbacks. That way, it wouldn't surprise me. All right, so that was our second point, just that someone would be the odd man out. That's one thing we learned. And I kind of mentioned our first point at top. It was just a larger global league point for people wondering where we are in the schedule.

13:42Like I mentioned, 10 teams doing OTAs this week. Eight are starting on Monday. We're going to have some more action, have some more quotes. Basically, the next five weeks is OTA season. Almost all the teams will be back by next week. And so that's just where we're at. And I just wanted to get your thoughts of the fact that Kid Cudi is at the Bengals OTAs today. Odd. Of all days to show up. First day of OTAs. Kid Cudi. I don't know why. Maybe he's there for a concert or something.

14:10Nick Shook:Kid Cudi, notably a Shaker Heights resident. Or not resident, but a native. That's a neighborhood just outside of Cleveland. A very diverse neighborhood. He's proud of that. He talks about the land all the time. And then he decides to go to Bengals OTA in a Bengals jersey, which makes no sense. So I looked up his tour thinking, well, maybe he's playing a show in Cincinnati. it's cross from now his next show is in St. Louis, uh, tomorrow. Well, that's, it makes no sense. I don't know why he's there. And he, he's wearing, uh, an 84 Jersey. Yeah. Okay. I don't know. I can't even recognize, recognize the name on the back.

14:47It makes no sense to me. I should have done a little more, uh, research there, but 84, I don't know.

14:53Nick Shook:84 is Jack injuries, uh, tight end from Texas, a rookie. Oh, you know who? Oh, it's Housh Manzada, of course. Okay. It's a new Housh Manzada jersey. They didn't wear that style of jersey. Yeah, it's an old school Housh jersey. So we're back. And like I mentioned, the Steelers are practicing. Our fourth nugget that we learned just was that Broderick Jones, who's had these neck back injuries that could potentially sideline him going into the season. He's not doing everything at their OTAs, but he's out there doing little warmups and moving around. So that's a good sign for Broderick Jones. For now, Ihanachar, who was their first-round pick, they have him on the third team.

15:30But that's a battle we'll be talking about a little more as we get to training.

15:33Nick Shook:And a position change because he spent his entire career at Arizona State on the right side and Jones' left tackle. So something to monitor. That's actually very intriguing in OTAs. Yeah, so we'll see where he ends up landing. Kayshawn Booty, not at Patriots workouts over the last few weeks. That was according to Mike Reese of ESPN, who just noted that all the Patriots receivers have been there, helping Romeo Dobbs get up to speed. They're just about to get onto the field, but they're not even on the field. They're just lifting weights. Normally, I wouldn't bother to mention this, but the fact that Keyshawn Booty is the only receiver not there, it does have me wondering if he's in this A.J.

16:13Brown trade. I'm going to put you on the spot. What do you think the A.J. Brown trade terms are? Now, I mean, it could be because Keyshawn Booty wants a new contract. It could just be because he wants to participate elsewhere. But I'm not usually a conspiracy theorist, Shook. I wouldn't be surprised if they told him, like, hey, man, you know, if you don't want to come, you don't have to come. Work out on your own because we're going to trade you on June 1st. If you want. You know, like they just gave him the score and then he was like, okay, I'm not going to come.

16:45Nick Shook:So this is a weird trade because I think if there was some sort of, like, time element to it like an urgency that i think the eagles would probably get more for it in an aj brown trade to the patriots and yet i feel like this has been so drawn out that that they probably lose a little bit of leverage still i would i mean if it's me i'm giving up a first rounder i don't know if they get a first rounder for him and if you were to consider throwing booty into a trade there which the eagles really don't have all that much room in their receiver room after what they've done this offseason but they could they could use him you would like to take him of course then i think that that pick drops to a second rounder or something like that i mean aj brown's still a highly valuable receiver it's just that he and the eagles can't work things out so i'm gonna eliminate a first rounder from the discussion and it's gonna disappoint me and i don't know though how he's involved this is tough this is tough because i feel like how he would extract maximum value and he would get a first rounder we're in that range i i think it's a 20 28 first rounder.

17:45So it's like you have to wait for the future and Booty going on. Because like Booty's in a contract year. I think him and Brown are a little duplicative as ball winners. He's a good player. He's never put up like monster stats in a season, but I think he's better than the numbers indicate. At the end of last season, me and Ollie Connelly had him on our kind of all underrated type of team or just like hidden gems. Like, he's a good player, which is why I think the Eagles could absolutely use him. Yes, they have Makai Lemon and Dontavian Wicks and Hollywood Brown behind Devontae Smith. None of those guys are really, you know, sideline X kind of one-on-one winners, good red zone guy.

18:28And so Booty, I think, who makes a lot of contested catches could fill a nice role for them. By the way, the A.J. Brown back when he was traded to the Eagles, it was for the 18th and the 101st pick. Remember, they took Traylon Burks for that 18th pick. But that was like for the current draft. So I think just kicking it out into the future, I'm guessing how he gets that first. It's 2028 plus just a little extra for Kayshawn Booty. I like pushing it on an extra year. It increases the likelihood of getting a first round pick. So I like that. Number six on our list, things we learned. And Jason Light spoke to the media, and that's the Bucs GM, and talked about their running back situation and said that Bucky Irving will be, quote, the chair of the Buccaneers Running Back Committee, which also includes Kenny Gainwell and Sean Tucker.

19:24Something I don't think I've talked about on the show. I'm curious if you had any thoughts. Like, Bucky Irving had a bad year last year. His numbers were just not as effective on a per-snap basis. the success rate, yards per carry, as Rashad White or Sean Tucker, actually, in that backfield. So what do you think about the Buccaneers backfield, Irving, Gainwell, and Tucker?

19:46Nick Shook:This is also a Buccaneers offense that relied heavily on Baker Mayfield early in the season for explosives, and then once that fell off a cliff, they just had nowhere to go. They finished 21st in total yards and 21st in rushing. So that doesn't surprise me that Bucky was part of that. Bucky was also kind of dinged up at times, right? So it's difficult to really distill exactly what last season meant for him. But I think he's earned the chair. I like the use of the term chair of the committee. We talk about backfield committees all the time. Not often that we have somebody anointed with the chair.

20:14Nick Shook:So congrats. It's not a throne. It's a chair. Bucky Irving gets the chair. I also like this backfield for the addition of Kenny Gainwell. We both love Kenny Gainwell. We love what he did for the Steelers last year, especially even as a pass catcher, which I think is a very underrated element in his game. I'm a big fan of Sean Tucker. He's a bit of a throwback. He's a hard runner. And I like the diversity of this backfield, but it's got to start with Bucky Irving. Making a sneaky amount of money, Sean Tucker, because if you remember, there was interest in him as a restricted free agent elsewhere, I believe it was Seattle.

20:45And so he ends up getting$3.5 million, and they decided to pay that up. He had seven touchdowns a year ago. And so he's going to be used in short yardage. To me, that's a fantasy, stay away type of situation. But I go to the money, and I go to what I saw on the field. Kenny Gainwell was a better player than Bucky Irving last year. Bucky was such a creative, exciting rookie player. I think he can get it back, but it seemed like he was just looking for big plays. And Todd Bowles and then the offense that they're running, they might be looking for someone who's a little more consistent. And that, to me, is Gainwell and Tucker.

21:21So I would be selling my Bucky Irving as the chair of the committee stock. or definitely selling, but getting him in fantasy. I'd sell his fantasy stock, definitely. Also in that division, Bryce Young got his fifth-year option picked up. The fifth year, not this year. It's not until 2027. Joseph Person of The Athletic said more clearly and confirmed what I expected, but that we haven't heard from the team, which is that do not expect a Bryce Young extension this offseason. that he doesn't think the Panthers are going to seriously consider or negotiate with Bryce. What do you think about Bryce Young kind of getting set up for a prove it 2026 season in terms of a long term contract?

22:06Nick Shook:I think this is exactly where he is on his career path. We're still not that far removed from him getting benched and then reclaiming his role. Last year, he was just very up and down. It just depended on the week, whether you got the Bryce Young that would throw for 400 in an overtime win over the Falcons or the Bryce Young who couldn't crack 200 the next week or the week prior. Like, it's just, it's too inconsistent. And I think that before they're going to commit any sort of long-term money outside of the rookie deal and you have that fifth-year option at your disposal, they just need to see more.

22:32Nick Shook:So this is absolutely a prove-a-year for him. The fifth-year option was always going to be picked up. And no extension expected before the season. I wouldn't be surprised if they didn't do one at all this year and just let him figure it out and then attack it next year. I think the only way he gets one this year is if he is playing at a Pro Bowl or top 10, 12 quarterback level. And that's a pretty big jump. Yeah, which is a which is possible. And then he gets it sometime in November or anything. You know, the awkward situation is if it doesn't work out and then he's making twenty five million dollars, which is.