Carolina Panthers long snapper J.J. Jansen didn’t exactly sell the Pittsburgh Steelers as must-watch material during a recent appearance on the NFL Daily podcast.
Jansen talked about former teammate Aaron Rodgers and Steelers head coach Mike McCarthy, and while he said he believes the two will work well together again in Pittsburgh, he wasn’t buying into a big leap for the team in 2026.
“I just don’t know that the team’s all that interesting, especially when you consider that division’s also got the Bengals and the Ravens… I still feel like they are a 9-8 team,” Jansen said. “They’re going to beat some teams that they shouldn’t and they’re going to lose some games that they shouldn’t. I would certainly trust the ball in Aaron’s hand in the fourth quarter, but it’s just an uninteresting 9-8, 10-7, 7-10 kind of team for me.”
Jansen is entering his 18th NFL season and is the league’s longest-tenured active player. He’s also the Panthers’ all-time leader in games played with 277.
After signing with the Green Bay Packers as an undrafted free agent in 2008, he never got into a regular-season game there before eventually landing in Carolina. Even so, he was around during the early Aaron Rodgers-Mike McCarthy years in Green Bay.
His projection lines up with the version of the Steelers fans have seen lately. Pittsburgh has finished with between nine and 10 wins in six of the last eight seasons, and the franchise hasn’t won a playoff game since the 2016 season, when it reached the AFC Championship Game before losing to the New England Patriots.
Mike Tomlin’s streak of never having a losing season has stayed intact, but the Steelers have still been stuck in that familiar middle ground: good enough to stay relevant, not good enough to break through.
That’s the gap Pittsburgh is trying to close with McCarthy. The hope is that a new voice, plus the Rodgers reunion, can push the team past the cycle of solid regular seasons that end without a postseason breakthrough.
Whether that actually happens is the big question now, especially with Rodgers seemingly headed for what could be the final stop of his Hall of Fame career.
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