Steelers DT Cam Heyward on Aaron Rodgers’ Will-He-or-Won’t-He Decision

Steelers defensive tackle Cam Heyward is in the same uncertainty fog Aaron Rodgers is in, and on The Rich Eisen Show he made the case that the four-time MVP is leaning toward one more chapter even if no one, Heyward included, has gotten Rodgers on FaceTime to confirm it.

Heyward sat next to Rich and walked through the strange gravity of last season's exit, when he and Rodgers and head coach Mike Tomlin all left the field together carrying their own versions of what's next. "Me, Aaron, and Mike T were all like in tandem walking off the field, and you know, everybody was pretty upset about that game, and you know, the uncertainty with me, uncertainty with Aaron, those were at the top of my brain," Heyward said. The Tomlin piece blindsided him. "The next day I go in the meetings and Mike T is saying I'm stepping down, and I'm just like, wait, what? I was in shock for a couple months."

Asked directly whether he thought he was walking off into the end of his own career that night, Heyward did not flinch. He said yes, personally, that thought crossed his mind. He has since gotten settled, in part through conversations with Tomlin, and has turned his attention to a Steelers roster he believes is built to be stout on both sides of the ball.

The Rodgers question is the louder one in Pittsburgh, and Heyward did not pretend to have inside information. He said there is one FaceTime Rodgers would not take and it is probably from him. But his read on Rodgers as a player walking off a season is unambiguous. "Rodgers, at the end of the day, when all the pieces land and the dust settles, would like to have one last shot at writing another chapter or two other than the one that just got written against the Texans," Heyward said, comparing the situation to Peyton Manning's late-career arc of taking a year, not quite getting it done, and coming back with a Super Bowl.

Heyward also flagged the practical math sitting on the Steelers' desk. Pittsburgh holds 12 picks in this draft, a haul he said he is not sure the franchise has ever had, and he sees them as ammunition. "You use them, or trade some around and move up," he said, before pivoting to the joke that landed the segment, asking Rich who they would talk to about trading for him. The answer, fittingly, was Mike Tomlin.