PITTSBURGH (AP) — Aaron Rodgers doesn’t see the need to dip into his greatest hits to put things in perspective for the slumping Pittsburgh Steelers.

The quarterback who famously told everyone in Green Bay — his teammates included — to “R-E-L-A-X” after a sluggish start, has no plans to spread the same message this time around as Pittsburgh (6-6) begins the stretch run with a visit to Baltimore (6-6) on Sunday with first place in the AFC North on the line.

“I don’t feel like this team has a freak out or a panic that I need to like send a message out to the zeitgeist that everybody needs to just relax a little bit,” Rodgers said Wednesday. “We’ve been playing inconsistent football, that’s for sure. Got to play better.”

The newly minted 42-year-old — a milestone the NFL’s oldest active player hit Tuesday — acknowledged the circumstances are a little different now than they were in 2014, when he felt there was an overreaction to Green Bay’s 1-2 start.

It was still September when Rodgers stood at the podium and uttered a phrase he felt was “authentic” to the moment. The Packers responded by winning 11 of their final 13 games and Rodgers easily won the second of his four MVP awards.

“We played three games, we played two (teams) that would turn out to be playoff teams and we went one and two, and then we went on an absolute heater after that,” Rodgers said.

Pittsburgh doesn’t have that kind of time to figure things out. It also doesn’t have the luxury of Rodgers in his prime. Still, the AFC North remains there for the taking despite a nearly two-month slide that’s seen the good vibes generated by a 4-1 start replaced by angst.

A portion of the fans who stuck around to the bitter end of a lopsided loss to Buffalo on Sunday called for longtime coach Mike Tomlin’s dismissal. Tomlin admitted he’s just as frustrated as they are but remains optimistic the Steelers can turn things around, in part because that’s his job.

Rodgers, who returned for a 21st season explicitly to join forces with Tomlin, is similarly upbeat.

“You kind of wait and hope for that run that you can go on to kind of get to be playing the right way come December,” he said. “But I think from a foundational standpoint, to be playing meaningful games in December is special and we need to embrace that.”

There’s nowhere to go but up.

Playing with a brace on his broken left wrist, Rodgers connected on just 10 of 21 passes for 117 yards and absorbed a game-altering sack-fumble on a crunching hit by Buffalo edge rusher Joey Bosa. The 10 completions marked a career low for a game Rodgers both started and finished, though he did take a series off while getting his busted nose patched up after getting drilled by Bosa.

The shaky play against the Bills wasn’t a one-off. Rodgers is completing just 52% of his passes with two touchdowns, two picks and two fumbles over his past 10 quarters, starting with one of the worst starts of his career against the Los Angeles Chargers on Nov. 9.

Rodgers isn’t ready to cede anything to age. He’s been doing this for a long time. The spate of recent clunkers isn’t the first time he’s endured a slump.

“When you have a great game, it’s never as good as you think it was, and when you struggle as an offense or personally, it’s never as bad (as you think it was),” Rodgers said. “So we’re always closer than we think and we’re also not as great as we think we are.”