The Pittsburgh Steelers recently made the decision to keep offensive coordinator Matt Canada for the 2023 season and on the heels of that, many have wondered if the team might decide to bring in a senior offensive assistant to help on that side of the football. On Thursday, Steelers team president Art Rooney II held his annual end-of-the-season media session and during his chat with local members of the media he was asked if there’s a possibility that a senior offensive assistant still might be added in the near future.
“I wouldn’t take anything off the table,” Ronney said, per 93.7 The Fan audio. “You know, we’re at that time of year where Mike’s [Tomlin] evaluating coaches. We have coaches that are interviewing other places, so the coaching staff, there could still be changes to it. But I don’t really wanna speculate on kind of where we might go.”
Since the decision to retain Canada was made, the growing hope from most of the Steelers’ fan base has been that we would see the team add a senior offensive assistant to their staff this offseason much in the same way that Brian Flores was added around this same time last year on the defensive side of the football.
Leading the long list of coaches who could possibly fit such a role on offense include the likes of former Tampa Bay Buccaneers offensive coordinator Byron Leftwich as well as a much older Jim Caldwell, who has spent numerous years in the NFL not only as a head coach, but as an offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach as well.
For those hoping that former Indianapolis Colts head coach Frank Reich might be a possibility for a senior offensive assistant role in Pittsburgh, he was named the new head coach of the Carolina Panthers on Thursday.
The Steelers added Flores to their staff as a senior defensive assistant and linebackers coach under head coach Mike Tomlin on February 19, 2022, so we are still several weeks away from the anniversary of that happening. Flores has been busy interviewing with several other NFL teams these last few weeks for openings that they have.
How will this all play out? We’ll have to wait and see. That said, the annual college all-star game weeks begin this weekend and there will be a ton of NFL coaches and personal gathering in the same cities for those contests. Maybe we’ll have more clarity once Tomlin and company return from those college all-star game weeks when it comes to whether or not a senior offensive assistant to help out Canada will be added to the staff.
