The Steelers are 1-1 and have scored 23 points. Not 23 in a game. Twenty-three total, across two weeks, with Aaron Rodgers at quarterback and Mike McCarthy running the building.
Somebody was going to say the quiet part out loud. Willie Colon got there first.
The former Pittsburgh offensive lineman went on Good Morning Football on Tuesday and described exactly what he thinks is wrong with this offense, and none of it is about talent.
What Colon Actually Said
“Look, the Steelers are trying to figure out do they have an offense that their quarterback, coach and offensive line can execute together,” Colon said.
Then he got specific. “On one hand, you’re hearing Mike McCarthy saying, ‘We gotta dial it back. It’s too much volume. We gotta simplify this thing.’ And Aaron’s simply saying, ‘No, we gotta execute better and we gotta be adults.’ So there’s a disconnect there.”
That is not a vague media take. That is a former player laying out two men trying to solve the same problem in opposite directions.
McCarthy wants less on the call sheet. Rodgers wants the same call sheet executed properly. Those positions do not meet in the middle, and they do not resolve themselves quietly.
The Numbers Are Ugly Enough to Prove Him Right
Through two games, Pittsburgh has converted five third downs. Five. In Week 2 against New England, the Steelers managed one field goal and Rodgers threw for 187 yards with an interception.
After that loss, Rodgers said he needed to do a better job of letting the coaching staff know which plays were not working. Read that again. It sounds like accountability and lands like a message to the guy holding the call sheet, which is precisely how Steelers fans took it.
Rodgers has been doing this for two decades. He knows how those words sound in a press conference. He said them anyway.
This Has Happened Before
The history here is not a secret. Rodgers and McCarthy spent years together in Green Bay, and the relationship was defined by exactly this sort of low-grade friction over who gets to decide what the offense is. It never exploded. It never fully healed either.
Pittsburgh reunited them anyway, which was always a bet that both men had changed. Two games is a small sample, and the Steelers are 1-1 with a defense that can keep them in games while this gets sorted out. Nobody should be calling for anything in September.
But the pattern is recognizable, and Colon is not the type to invent it. He played in that locker room. He knows what a fractured offense sounds like from the inside, and he heard it in two weeks of quotes.
Here is the call: this is McCarthy’s mess to clean up, and simplifying the offense is the wrong fix. You do not hand a four-time MVP a smaller menu and ask him to be happy about it. You give him the keys and live with the results, or you admit the partnership was a bad idea before it costs everyone a season.
Pittsburgh has time. It does not have much.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.