As if we needed more evidence that Matt Canada struggled with play-calling on Sunday (and let’s be honest, almost every game since he’s been the Pittsburgh Steelers offensive coordinator), The Athletic’s Ted Nguyen did a great breakdown on why he has Canada making some of the worst coaching decisions of the week.
Nguyen highlights Canada frequently calling shallow cross, a concept that puts the onus on the middle linebacker to cover a receiver or tight end coming across the formation on a drag route, with another option usually sitting over the middle of the field. The idea is to make the linebacker choose whether to run with the guy coming across or cover the player in the middle of the field, and it can be a good zone-beater. But Canada apparently didn’t account for the fact the San Francisco 49ers linebacker Fred Warner is one of the better coverage linebackers in football and it’s a play he’s seen dozens upon dozens of times. Below is a look at the concept the first time it was called.
Nguyen has Canada calling two different variations of shallow cross a whopping eight times on Sunday, with Pickett going 1-of-4 with an interception, a near-interception, and two sacks. The play design itself is fine. It would likely work decently well against a zone-heavy team that doesn’t have two very talented coverage linebackers in Warner and Dre Greenlaw, but to call the play eight freaking times when it’s clearly not working is unfathomable.
Canada first called the play on the Steelers’ opening drive, and it took too long to develop due to the coverage over the middle, which led to Pickett getting sacked. If Canada wanted to give it a go maybe once more to see what would happen if the play was able to develop faster, then fine. But for it to continually not work over and over and for him to keep going back to it doesn’t make any sense.
“Shallow cross might be one of Pickett’s favorite concepts since college, but the scouting report should have told Canada not to call it too frequently, and based on the results, he should have gone away from it, but he kept calling it even on their final drive. At least they finally completed the last one for 10 yards,” Nguyen writes.
So the Steelers went seven times running shallow cross without completing a pass, getting their young franchise quarterback sacked twice, and seeing him almost throw two interceptions, and decided to run the play again and again. If that doesn’t sum up the Steelers’ offense under Matt Canada, I’m not quite sure what does.
