Matt Canada is here to stay as offensive coordinator for the 2023 season, but here are the biggest reasons why the Pittsburgh Steelers are making a mistake.
I’m not going to start to pretend that the Pittsburgh Steelers offense doesn’t have issues outside of Matt Canada. Though their offensive line improved, they still have a less-than-spectacular unit up front with a pair of offensive tackles that probably need to be replaced. Their receiving corps was also pretty unspectacular outside of rookie George Pickens this year, as Diontae Johnson really struggled. However, make no mistake: Canada is the biggest issue with this offense.
Week after week during the 2022 season, I’ve rewatched the games and broken down the film. The more I watch, the harder it becomes to defend Pittsburgh’s offensive coordinator. Sadly, there’s no reason to believe it will get much better either. Here are the four biggest reasons why the Steelers are making a colossal mistake keeping Matt Canada in 2023.
4. Steelers two-year sample with Matt Canada has been poor
You don’t have to look very far to figure out how things have gone on offense for the Pittsburgh Steelers over the past two years. In 2021 with Ben Roethlisberger at quarterback, Canada’s offense scored 20.2 points per game in his first season as offensive coordinator.
This year, that number dipped down to just 18.1 points per game, per ESPN stats. Though things seemed to get better since the bye week, Pittsburgh also had one of the easiest stretches of games in the second half of the year. The biggest improvements came on defense; not from Canada’s offense.
When you consider that the Steelers fired Randy Fichtner after the team scored 26.6 points per game in 2020, it’s hard to believe that things could have gone downhill so fast. Matt Canada’s two-year sample has been very poor.
3. Steelers passing concepts are among the worst in the league
It was a running joke all year among Pittsburgh Steelers fans that Matt Canada avoided the middle of the football field like the plague. Fans of other teams would wonder how true this really was, but anyone can see what I mean if you take a quick look at the week-by-week passing charts from Next Gen Stats.
Admittedly, these don’t tell the whole story. That’s why we let the game film do the talking. Sadly, the more we watched, the harder it became to defend Pittsburgh’s underwhelming offensive coordinator.
In an effort to protect his rookie quarterback from making risky passes over the middle of the football field, Canada’s passing plays were designed to go to the sidelines. The problem with this is that it left very little room for receivers to help their QB out by chewing up yards after the catch. As a result, Pittsburgh was among the worst teams in the league in YAC.
While Canada liked to use pre-snap motion in the run game, his passing concepts greatly lacked creativity. There were very few pick plays or routes designed to work off each other. This wasn’t just with Pickett either, as Ben Roethlisberger went through much of the same. Teams that can’t throw the ball over the middle of the field or struggle to create yards after the catch rarely have top-ranked offenses, and it’s pretty self-explanatory as to why.
2. Matt Canada will hold back Kenny Pickett
We need to be careful not to try to pin the blame on Matt Canada for everything. I wasn’t the biggest advocate for Kenny Pickett to begin with, and the rookie QB (as well as Mitch Trubisky) had a big hand in the lack of success on offense this year. While I don’t believe that Pickett has the ceiling to be a top-tier quarterback in the NFL, I still think that Canada’s offense is holding him back from his maximum potential.
By trying to protect his quarterback, Canada is actually setting him up for failure. The offense is designed to limit risks and allow the quarterback to make simple reads. Canada’s patented speed roll-out is a perfect example. By doing this, the Steelers limit themselves in terms of big-play potential.
What does it matter if Kenny Pickett only threw one interception from Week 8 to the end of the season if this team still had a below-average offense during that span? I would rather increase the risk of certain throws if it maximizes Pickett’s potential and the upside of this offense.
If Canada continues with the same game plan in 2023, I fear that it could be really bad for Pickett’s career path. Pickett has never thrown more than 1 touchdown pass in a game 5.5 adjusted yards per attempt ranked near the very bottom of the league.
1. Steelers winning philosophy needs to be re-evaluated
At what point did this organization settle for being just okay? Instead of making proactive moves to vault themselves toward being legitimate Super Bowl contenders, they are stuck in a rut of mediocrity. ‘The standard is the standard’ seems to have found a new meaning, as keeping our head above water with a .500 record seems to be good enough these days.
The move to keep Matt Canada around for another season after everything we know is bizarre. It would seem like personal relationships are more important to Mike Tomlin and Art Rooney II than actually making tough personnel decisions in order to become contenders once more.
Tomlin still believes that his team can be good enough to win the Super Bowl if they run the ball 40 times per game, play good defense, and limit mistakes on offense. The problem is this team still gets smacked against high-powered offenses. This philosophy simply isn’t going to work well enough to win four games in a row in the playoffs to become Super Bowl champions.
I’m not going to say that there’s no chance Matt Canada could turn this offense around, but Pittsburgh’s philosophy seems to be stuck in the early 2000s. This is a rapidly-changing league, and they need to adapt their game plan to fit the times.