Worst-laid plans?

Steelers, Knicks have many observers scratching their heads

Associated Press photo

In this age of analytics, strategy seems to be almost as important as talent in the recipe for sports success. Athletes at every level enter competition with specific, researched intentions — although, as Mike Tyson once put it, “Everyone has a plan ’til they get punched in the mouth.”

Which makes me wonder: just what are the Pittsburgh Steelers and New York Knicks thinking?

These two once-proud franchises seem to be grasping at straws while trying to stay relevant and competitive. The Steelers recently announced the signing of 41-year-old quarterback Aaron Rodgers, while the Knicks — coming off their best season in decades — fired coach Tom Thibodeau and are still looking for his successor two weeks later.

Let’s start with the Steelers, who have been a bastion of well-run consistency for more than half a century. They’ve employed three head coaches (Chuck Noll, Bill Cowher and Mike Tomlin) since 1969, winning six Super Bowls, and their last losing season came in 2003.

But they haven’t won a playoff game since January of 2017, and since Ben Roethlisberger retired following the 2022 season, they’ve joined the list of teams vainly searching for a franchise quarterback. That quest included a lukewarm performance from former Pro Bowler Russell Wilson last fall.

Now, they’re casting their lot with Rodgers, a future first-ballot Hall of Famer whose prime seems well behind him.

His numbers last season with the New York Jets (3,897 passing yards, 28 touchdowns, 11 interceptions) made fantasy league owners happy. But the Jets finished 5-12.

Those stats were eerily similar to his totals in 2022 in Green Bay (3,695 yards, 26 TDs, 12 picks), when the Packers went 8-9 and missed the playoffs, prompting management to cut ties with him. Like Brett Favre before him, Rodgers moved to the Jets, but he tore his Achilles tendon four snaps into the opener and missed the entire 2023 season.

Clearly, Rodgers has some juice left in his right arm. But in an era of dual-threat QBs, he’s arguably the NFL’s least-mobile passer, and he’s joining a team with a suspect offensive line. Pro Football Network rates the Steelers’ front five as the 25th-best unit in the league (one spot ahead of the Jets), and CBS Sports puts Pittsburgh’s O-line in its lowest D Tier, a group described as “Dangerously Concerning.”

And the Steelers chose to wait on Rodgers rather than drafting a quarterback or pursuing anyone else in free agency. They allowed Wilson and Justin Fields to sign with New York’s dreadful teams and kept journeymen Mason Rudolph and Skylar Thompson as backups.

This suggests they believed all along that they believed Rodgers would sign with them. Apparently having no other options, he did. Now, they’re stuck with each other.

Rodgers does have an elite receiver in newly acquired DK Metcalf, but will he be healthy (and upright) enough to get Metcalf the ball in an offense that has been run-heavy for decades? Time will tell.

We’ll also see if the Knicks can find a coach to take them farther than the NBA’s Eastern Conference finals, which they reached this spring for the first time in 25 years. That apparently wasn’t good enough for the front office after Thibodeau reportedly clashed with some of his top players and used his thin bench less than any team in the league.

So he was fired by a team that apparently hadn’t thought things through. Now that Dan Snyder is out of D.C., Tom Dolan sits at the top of many lists of the worst owners in pro sports, but the hiring of Thibodeau, free-agent signing of Jaren Brunson and trade for Karl-Anthony Towns had made the Knicks competitive and exciting again.

Since Thibodeau’s dismissal, though, the Knicks reportedly have been rebuffed by the Dallas Mavericks, Houston Rockets, Minnesota Timberwolves and Atlanta Hawks in their requests to speak to those teams’ coaches (all of whom are under contract). The reported leading Plan B candidates are Mike Brown and Taylor Jenkins — qualified basketball men, but not exactly headliners for a city that never sleeps.

Jenkins, whose late-season firing in Memphis caught many by surprise, might actually be a good fit. Similarly, Rodgers may stay healthy enough to make one last stand in Pittsburgh.

If so, the Knicks and Steelers might luck into a solution despite having the worst-laid plans. I wouldn’t count on it, though.