After months of rather awkward courtship, the Pittsburgh Steelers and free agent quarterback Aaron Rodgers agreed last night to spend 18 weeks together in darkness. Sources tell Defector that the darkness will be “vast” and “impenetrable,” casting “a permanent shadow over Western Pennsylvania” that will “extinguish all traces, all memory, of the lighted world.”
This darkness—this total fucking darkness—is scheduled to envelop the Steelers on Sept. 7 of this year and remain in place for 18 weeks thereafter. Earlier this spring, other NFL teams expressed mild interest in having the darkness consume them entirely. But the Steelers, famous for using the color black on their home jerseys, were always a natural match for Rodgers, and for the parasitic void that both parties are now doomed to inhabit.
“I can already feel the darkness arriving,” said Pittsburgh native and self-proclaimed Steelers diehard Rod Rodowsky. “It feels as if a great and powerful claw is reaching into my soul to rip it apart. God, imagine when we play the Browns. I wish that one scene in that one Batman movie had really happened.”
But Steelers coaches say they welcome the darkness with open arms.
“It’s gonna get dark out there, but that’s Steelers football,” said head coach Mike Tomlin. “Our philosophy, as a team, is to drag everyone into a giant sucking hole that transports them to an alternate dimension where all they know is despair. And if you can’t suck that hard, then you’re gonna have to find a roster spot somewhere else.
“Anyone else feel a sudden chill?” Tomlin added. “That was weird.”
“You can still run the ball in the dark,” offensive coordinator Arthur Smith assured the press. Indeed, with little time to spare before all Steelers players and archdaemons must report to mandatory minicamp on June 10, Smith says that he is already revising the team’s playbook to include more zero-yard runs, more incomplete bubble screens, and more panic throws downfield that are guaranteed to be intercepted.
“We’re gonna make defenses miserable,” Smith went on. “We’re gonna make everyone miserable, actually. Wait until you watch us try to run a tush push, in the pitch black, with a 41-year-old pegleg.”
As for Rodgers, the quarterback told reporters that he was delighted to “find a new host organism” after months of uncertainty. The four-time league MVP says that his surgically repaired ankle feels “more pus-infected and necrotic than it’s ever been,” and he’s pledged to report to mandatory minicamp. Once on the practice field with his new team, Rodgers is expected to conjure a cloud of profound sorrow that only grows and grows and grows, annihilating all existing matter within it.
Sources also tell Defector say that Rodgers has already begun working with newly acquired Pittsburgh wideout D.K. Metcalf on a series of hand signals to find their way through that impossible emptiness to reach the team’s ultimate goal of a 9-8 season.
“It’s gonna be dark as shit,” Metcalf told FanDuel host Kay Adams. “Let’s fucking go!”
The deal is still pending a physical.
