The Steelers are at the UPMC Rooney Sports Complex, informally known as the South Side facility, now into the regular season. It’s where they otherwise train all year round, and the facility that Burt Lauten insists everybody refers to by its full name.
There are still unsettled questions that need answering, even deep into the regular season. They entered the process with questions in the starting lineup, in scheme, and elsewhere, but new problems always arise that need to be resolved.
Even questions about who’s starting and when may not have satisfactory answers in their finality, as midseason changes are certainly quite possible, for some positions more than others. We’re also feeling out how the new coordinator posts—or posts in new contexts—end up playing out.
There’s never any shortage of questions when it comes to football, and we’ll be discussing them here on a daily basis for the community to “talk amongst yourselves”, as Linda Richman might say on Coffee Talk.
Question: Is there actually a chance that the Steelers could make a change at offensive coordinator during the bye week?
There was a bit of a kerfuffle yesterday evening thanks to one of Pittsburgh’s most notorious pot-stirrers, 93.7 The Fan’s Andrew Fillipponi, who perhaps intentionally misquoted NFL reporter Aditi Kinkhabwala—or rather mistook his own question.
You see, Poni asked her if she thinks that the Steelers would really fire offensive coordinator Matt Canada if the Steelers had another very poor offensive showing on Sunday against the Philadelphia Eagles. For her part, she did say yes, unequivocally. She does think that they would do that.
What she did not say was that it was based on anything specific she had heard or been told by significant sources. She did say that she doesn’t think these are “our grandfathers’ Steelers”, which is to say that she doesn’t believe this current team would be so averse to firing a coach in-season.
Head coach Mike Tomlin has never fired a coach in-season, though he has stripped a coach of responsibilities. He really hasn’t fired many coaches at all, rather, usually letting their contracts run out and then moving on.
But given the state the team is currently in—they’ve scored 33 points in their past three games—I’m not sure it’s so unreasonable. We are in uncharted territory in many ways. If Canada isn’t working out for rookie starting quarterback Kenny Pickett, then why not make a change at an opportune time?
I think even Canada knows at this point that he is not long for the ‘Burgh. I don’t know for certain, but I suspect that his contract runs only through the 2022 season, and I anticipate that it won’t be renewed in the chance that he survives the season. Otherwise, I expect him to be fired sometime between now and then. But could it really be next week? Or at least, could they reorganize the power structure behind the scenes?
