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By Rowan Fisher-Shotton
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The Pittsburgh Steelers' offense looked bad in Week 1.
Aaron Rodgers completed 24 of 40 passes (60%) for 221 yards and one touchdown. Jaylen Warren and Rico Dowdle combined for 61 total yards on 18 attempts (3.4 yards per carry), and their leading receiver was Michael Pittman Jr. with 58 yards on three catches. The Steelers went 3 for 13 on third downs, 0 for 2 on fourth downs, and barely clung to a 20-13 win over the visiting Falcons, who had veteran Cooper Rush under center.
But maybe the most disappointing performance of the game came from DK Metcalf, who hauled in four catches on 10 targets for 40 yards, including a couple of bad drops and two pass interference calls against him.
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Despite all of that, Rodgers isn't worried about his star wide receiver.
"I'm not worried about DK at all, man," Rodgers said. "I love DK. He's one of my closest friends on the team, and I'm going to keep feeding him."
Rodgers later explained the pass interference calls against Metcalf and how they can be "deceiving" and inconsistent at times.
"We had PI on a third down that could have been a touchdown. We had another blatant PI on DK that wasn't called ... Had DK in the end zone. For sure PI. He still almost made a ridiculous catch. And then one that DK obviously usually catches," Rodgers said. "One of those goes [our way] or two of those goes, and it's a whole different conversation. That's the way the league is. You can't get too caught up in specific numbers without looking at what actually happened in the game."
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Metcalf wasn't the only player who disappointed in Week 1. But when you're paid $132 million to be a No. 1 wide receiver in the NFL, you can't afford off days.
Metcalf is also a player who's dealt with drops throughout his career. He had 37 across his first six seasons in Seattle, and five last year with the Steelers. He had a catch rate of just 59.6% in 2025, and he's already off to a rough start this season. It also doesn't help that last year, his first in Pittsburgh, he finished with just 850 receiving yards, the lowest total of his career.
And while Rodgers continues to back him, there's a reason the Steelers brought in Pittman this past offseason. They're clearly preparing for the possibility that Metcalf can't turn things around, and so far, he's shown little to suggest that he will.
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