Steelers coaching staff carousel hints at one path for 2024

After the Steelers unceremonious exit in the wild-card round that ended what to me was nothing short of a 'roller coaster ride', I think we all knew changes were looming and probably looming large after the comments made by Art Rooney II regarding the lack of playoff wins.

The long and short of what Rooney said was simply that the lack of playoff appearances and the lack of playoff wins is getting old. The reality is we have not won a playoff game since the 2016 season. We have not made a Super Bowl appearance since the 2010 season. We have not won a Super Bowl since the 2008 season.

I think you get my point but for a franchise that won four Super Bowls over a span of six years and has won six Super Bowls in our storied history, the wild card loss was probably 'the straw that broke the camel's back'. So, changes needed to be made and, so far, several changes have been made.

The Steelers coaching staff changes suggest only one path for 2024

You could argue that the coaching changes started with the dismissal of Matt Canada, which was surprising given the timing, meaning that an in-season coordinator change was unheard of until the aforementioned happened, but it did and that opened the door for a new coordinator to be hired.

In comes Arthur Smith, most recently the head coach of the Atlanta Falcons. If history is any indication, I think it's pretty safe to say that the Steelers offense in 2024 will resemble the Steelers offenses of the early 1990s.

Those 1990s offenses were run-centric but the passing game was also a significant contributor to the success of the offense. What was also pretty much a standard for the 1990s offenses was the ability to score. Granted, we never led the league in scoring, but we were able to score points pretty consistently.

That's presumably the reason Smith was hired, It's no secret that the offenses under Canada were feckless when it came to scoring points consistently. That's also presumable why we made fairly significant changes to the offensive coaching staff.

We have hired three additional coaches, most notably Tom Arth, who was the Los Angeles Chargers passing game specialist. If you look at the coaching staff as a whole, one thing comes to mind for me. We are in a win-now mode.

That's the only path forward for the 2024 season. We must score more points and must score more points consistently. We also must transform the offense into an offense that not only complements the defense but strikes fear into our opponents.

None of us truly knows what the offense will look like or how effective the offense will be in 2024. What we do know is that the Steelers offense has been almost an afterthought for the past three seasons and that is unacceptable.

What is also unacceptable is the fact that we have not won a playoff game in nearly a decade and that we have not won a Super Bowl in a decade and a half. The revamping of the offensive coaching staff is a clear message from Mike Tomlin via Art Rooney that we will no longer accept mediocrity. Like anything else, it remains to be seen how things will play out in 2024.