The Pittsburgh Steelers’ 2020 season is now in the books, and it ended in spectacular fashion—though the wrong kind of spectacular—in a dismal postseason defeat at the hands of the Cleveland Browns, sending them into an early offseason mode after going 12-4 in the regular season and winning the AFC North for the first time in three years.
After setting a franchise record by opening the year on an 11-game winning streak, they followed that up by losing three games in a row, going 1-4 in the final five games, with only a 17-point comeback staving off a five-game slide. But all the issues they had in the regular season showed up in the postseason that resulted in their early exit.
The only thing facing them now as they head into 2021 is more questions, and right now, they lack answers. What will Ben Roethlisberger do, and what will they do with him? What will the salary cap look like? How many free agents are they going to lose? Who could they possibly afford to retain? Who might they part ways with—not just on the roster, but also on the coaching staff?
These are the sorts of questions among many others that we have been exploring on a daily basis and will continue to do so. Football has become a year-round pastime and there is always a question to be asked, though there is rarely a concrete answer, as I’ve learned in my years of doing this.
Question: Who will serve as the Steelers’ quarterbacks coach?
Perhaps, though not definitely, the final remaining significant question on the Steelers’ coaching staff to be assembled for the 2021 season is who will serve as the team’s quarterbacks coach after Matt Canada was promoted to offensive coordinator.
After Adrian Klemm was promoted to offensive line coach, they still need to hire an assistant for him as well, and it’s still possible that they could hire a second secondary coach after letting Tom Bradley go, rather than leaving Teryl Austin to handle all of it.
This will mark the third year in a row in which a different individual has acted as quarterbacks coach, after Randy Fichtner served in that role from 2010 through the 2019 season. Canada was hired to do the job last year, but it has already been reported that the Steelers will hire somebody else rather than allow him to serve in both roles.
With a first-year offensive coordinator and a first-year offensive line coach, one would think that they might want to bring in a seasoned and experienced individual to serve as quarterbacks coach. Pep Hamilton would have been a good hire, but he signed elsewhere.
Could they find a similarly-experienced coach to take the job? Would they want it? Is that even the direction they’re looking at? Could they simply continue to promote from within and name Matt Symmes the quarterbacks coach, after working with the quarterbacks for the past few years?
