It was an ugly offensive performance in Week One against the San Francisco 49ers at Acrisure Stadium for the Pittsburgh Steelers.
Pittsburgh never got going offensively, reeling off five straight three-and-outs to open the game, ultimately putting themselves — and the defense — in a major whole that they couldn’t recover from.
For third-year offensive coordinator Matt Canada, the struggles were rather simple. The Steelers couldn’t have any kind of normal routine offensively because of the three-and-outs, and that they couldn’t do anything they planned on doing offensively because of the hole they dug quickly.
“You can’t have five three-and-outs and get down 20-0 and have any kind of a normal routine. Everything we talked about doing we can’t do,” Canada said to reporters Thursday, according to a tweet from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette’s Ray Fittipaldo via Twitter. “Kenny [Pickett] can improve, but we all can.”
“…Bottom line is, a play here and there, it’s a different game. Again, that game got away so fast, and it’s completely because we went the way we did at the start. If that’s not the case, we didn’t get to run the plays we wanted to do to our own fault,” Canada added, according to video via 93.7 The Fan’s Jeff Hathhorn on Twitter.
The five three-and-outs were a killer for Pittsburgh. They were never able to find a rhythm offensively until late in the first half with the two-minute drill. The up-tempo approach helped Pittsburgh march 95 yards in 12 plays before eventually getting on the board.
Pickett missed some throws early in the game and took some bad sacks. The second-year quarterback threw an interception on an ill-advised pass, too. It didn’t help that the offensive line struggled at times with protection and then wasn’t really given an opportunity to generate much of a run game as Pittsburgh called run just twice in the game’s first 12 plays.
In those five three-and-outs that Canada cited, the Steelers had one net yard of total offense. That’s not going to get it done. Canada added that Pickett — along with everyone else offensively — has some things to clean up moving forward. That’ll be key in doing what it is the Steelers want to do offensively, whatever that may be.
Heading into the matchup, the Steelers had a plan of attack, but due to failures to execute at a respectable level early in the game, that plan went out the window. The Steelers keep harping on execution coming out of the loss. They better be able to execute at a high level on Monday night against the Cleveland Browns if the negativity surrounding Canada and the offense — again — is to quiet some.
