It was one preseason game, but plenty of Steelers’ fans are excited about the display their team had on the offensive side of the football Friday night against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Who could blame them? Pittsburgh looked sharp right from the start, marching down the field on the opening drive, capping it off with an impressive throw from QB Kenny Pickett to WR George Pickens that he caught over the middle of the field and broke away after the catch to take it to the house.
Throw in the touchdowns from RB Anthony McFarland Jr. and WR Calvin Austin III and the Steelers had more success in the splash play category offensively in a preseason game than they had through multiple games during the 2022 season. The execution by the first-team offense has a lot of people excited to see more. That includes OC Matt Canada, who while speaking with the media on Sunday, said that this offense is capable of being a dangerous unit in 2023.
“I think we could be really good,” Canada said via video from Steelers.com. “We’re gonna keep quietly moving forward and doing one thing at a time, but consistently getting better. Like I said, we did all the things we did last year in that game, but it looked, but with our ones, it was clean, it was good, it was sharp, our execution was better. And that’s the same thing we’ve been talking about for a long time. So, I’m really excited about where we’re at and where we’re headed.”
Canada’s comments about doing the same things as last year offensively were also mentioned post-game by RB Najee Harris, who said that the offense saw what it could be a season ago when things weren’t going well but had to continue working together and execute the plays better to see the desired results.
Well, they accomplished that on Friday night, executing Canada’s offense well and punching multiple drives into the end zone. Given that Pittsburgh had a bunch of rookies playing prominent roles on offense last season, it’s understandable that there were some growing pains. However, those young guys are heading into their second seasons, having more experience and time together with one another. The work behind the scenes is starting to show results, hopefully continuing the upward trend for this offense going forward and into the season.
