Steelers Matt Canada still has a job and troubling questions now linger

Did Steelers Mike Tomlin intervene in play calling?

Now another story emerged which, if true, may make fans scratch their head. According to Jeff Hathhorn, the Steelers insider for 93.7 The Fan when he joined the PM Team with Poni and Mueller had a stunning revelation.

It’s Mike Tomlin who wanted this offense to be vanilla….Just not turn it over, that’s his game plan. Be conservative and let the defense win the game. That’s not Canada’s game plan. It’s the game plan he was told to create. Ultimately it’s on Tomlin. They just didn’t want to take any chances”

If true, this leads to some questions. Ok, perhaps it worked going down the stretch, but simply entrusting games to your defense is risky. As we saw against Philadelphia and the Bills. The first question that leads to is that if Tomlin had to dumb down the offense for his players, then there is still a problem with the offensive coordinator.

Tomlin supposedly eliminated many of the RPOs he felt were not being properly executed. By Najee’s own admission, that’s perhaps on the players. And so shouldn’t the coaching staff be looking for players that can run the offensive coordinators’ playbook?

That said, players are professionals and should be able to work within the confines of any offensive coordinator. If the head coach has to intervene and tell the coordinator what to run, then why is that person still employed?

If the report is true, it leads to some troubling issues. First is that Tomlin seems to have this tendency to control everything. So why have assistant coaches at all? Secondly, if Tomlin had to dumb down the offense, does that not still indicate a problem with the offensive coordinator? Third, if Tomlin had to dictate what type of offense to run, why does he go to such great lengths to protect Matt Canada?

As much as many of you hate the Tomlin bashing. We all know 16 non-losing seasons and only one championship title is exceedingly amazing. Dream on. Bill Belichek had 19 consecutive non-losing seasons, six titles in nine Superbowl appearances, and a 30-11 playoff record. In Tomlin’s 16 seasons, he goes one in one in title games and lost four wild card appearances and an 8-9 overall playoff record. In that context not overly impressive.

The bottom line is that it appears those that want Canada gone may have to wait one more year, and it means another year of an indecisive head coach that can not pull the trigger when needed. Yet you all have yourselves fooled into thinking a title is just around the bend in 2023.