Aaron Rodgers says he will retire after the 2026 NFL season: ‘This is it’ - NBC News

Four-time NFL Most Valuable Player Aaron Rodgers says he will retire after the upcoming season, ending a career in which he became a fixture in the league for more than two decades. Rodgers, 42, spent more than four months deciding whether to return for a 22nd NFL season before he signed a one-year contract Monday to return to Pittsburgh for his second season with the Steelers. Asked Wednesday whether the upcoming season would be the last of his career, Rodgers told reporters, “Yes, this is it.” He will end his career with a Super Bowl title and ranked among the most prolific quarterbacks in the history of pro football. Rodgers is tied for first all-time in passer rating, fourth in passing touchdowns and fifth in passing yards. One year ago Rodgers had suggested the 2025 season could be his last, then he helped Pittsburgh earn the AFC North division title and a playoff berth. Rodgers said he felt “some doubt” about returning for this season before he decided to re-sign with Pittsburgh after April’s NFL draft, according to ESPN. One factor in his decision was Pittsburgh’s new coach, Mike McCarthy, whom Rodgers had played for in Green Bay for 13 seasons. He finished the season with his highest completion percentage and passer rating since 2021 and 24 touchdowns, his fewest in a season in which he played at least 10 games. “I thought that was probably it for me in Pittsburgh,” Rodgers told reporters. “But when the decision was made to hire Mike, I started opening my mind back up to coming back.” One of his greatest strengths has been how rarely he turned the ball over, relative to other high-usage quarterbacks of his era. Despite attempting 8,743 passes, sixth-most in league history, he threw interceptions on only 1.4% of them, a percentage that ties for the best all time. After he threw 13 interceptions during his first season as a starter in 2008, he went on to throw double-digit interceptions just once over his next 13 seasons. He is best known for his time in Green Bay, where he earned all 10 of his Pro Bowl honors and blossomed from a backup to Brett Favre for three seasons into an elite passer in his own right. Rodgers was named the Most Valuable Player of the Super Bowl during the Packers’ victory to cap the 2011 season, when he was also was named the league’s Most Valuable Player. He went on to win the award again in 2014, 2020 and 2021, with his four wins second only to Peyton Manning all time. To say his Hall of Fame-worthy career was surprising would be a dramatic understatement. After high school in Chico, California, Rodgers attended Butte College, a junior college that was multiple rungs lower than major college football. His success at Butte led him to Berkeley, where he starred at California and became viewed as a first-round draft talent in the NFL. On draft night in 2005, with cameras trained on him as he tried to maintain his composure, Rodgers sat in a green room for hours as 22 teams passed on him before Green Bay selected him 24th overall. For the next three years, he was an understudy to Favre, a Hall of Famer before he took over as the Packers’ starter in 2008, at age 25.