In some ways, the union of Aaron Rodgers and Mike Tomlin was always meant to be. Once opponents in Super Bowl XLV and both very highly regarded as future Hall of Famers, both Rodgers and Tomlin are looking to improve on some of their recent failures in the league. Ryan Clark believes the pairing might show promise, but not enough to erase the growing doubts surrounding their careers.
“After this season, we’re gonna have sort of a referendum on what Aaron Rodgers’ career is and what Mike Tomlin’s career is,” Clark said via ESPN’s Get Up this morning. “Both of them have such a high floor of talent, of ability, of potential to be the greatest that’s ever done it, in my opinion, at their individual positions and places on their team. And they’ve both underachieved.”
Rodgers is statistically one of the best to ever do it. He is entering this season with the best NFL passer rating of all time and the best touchdown-to-interception ratio. He has the second-most MVP seasons. Yet since 2017, he’s only won two playoff games. And he only has the one Super Bowl appearance and ring to his name.
For Tomlin, he has one of the best win-loss records of all time for a coach. As long as the Steelers win at least eight games this season, he will enter the top 10 for all-time wins as a head coach. With 10 wins, he will tie Chuck Noll for ninth place. And there are only seven people ahead of him on the list with a better win-loss percentage. Yet since 2016 he has zero playoff wins. For all the talent he’s had to work with, he was done going to the Super Bowl by his fourth season as a head coach and has just one ring and two appearances to his name.
Clark’s shifting view of both Tomlin and Rodgers comes from the very high bar he set for them during his playing days.
“When I walked off of the field in the Super Bowl in 2011 in February in Dallas, I knew I had just played the best quarterback I’d ever seen,” Clark said. “I thought to myself, ‘This dude’s gonna come back and win multiple Super Bowls. He’s gonna be the best that’s ever played.’ But he hasn’t even been back to a Super Bowl.
“When I played with Nick Saban, I was 21 and 22 years old. And he prepared you in a way, motivated you in a way like no one I’d ever seen until I met Mike Tomlin. I thought to myself, ‘He’s going to end up being the greatest coach of all time.’ And neither of those things happened.”
Not only have both underachieved, but they are coming off some of the worst seasons of their career. Rodgers won five games with the Jets last year, tore his Achilles the year before, and had one of his worst seasons as a Green Bay Packer in 2022. Tomlin’s teams have had three- or four-game losing streaks in December in each of the last two seasons with embarrassing playoff losses in both years. And they missed the playoffs in 2022 altogether.
The mystique has worn off and their reputations have both taken a hit in recent years. Salvaging that together in 2025 seems like a longshot. If they are unable to, Clark thinks a referendum is coming on both of their careers in the court of public opinion.
While Rodgers probably is out of opportunities to turn that around at the end of his career, Tomlin still has time. Clark has stated this opinion several times before, but he thinks it’s time for Tomlin to move on and have his “Andy Reid run” with another franchise.
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