All the fans want out of the Pittsburgh Steelers on offense right now is just competence. It’s hard to say that they’re getting that. There may have been some steps in the right direction during their Monday night win over the Cleveland Browns, but the majority of their 26 points were still supplied by two defensive touchdowns.
There isn’t just one overarching issue with their performance. Rather, it’s many things, and I think we all know what the public opinion is of offensive coordinator Matt Canada. While WR George Pickens is coming off a good game, second-year QB Kenny Pickett is clearly struggling, as is the unit as a whole.
A win is nice, but the overall play on offense hasn’t been. There’s only so much Pickett or Pickens or WR Calvin Austin III or RB Najee Harris can do about it on their own. And the negative results could be a blow to their confidence, which head coach Mike Tomlin acknowledged yesterday is something he worries about—yet not to the point of indecision.
“You do [worry], but there’s a lot of things that you worry about. It can’t paralyze you”, he said during his weekly press conference about the potential of damaging the confidence of his young offensive players, via the team’s website. “It certainly can’t paralyze us in terms of training them and demanding that they continue to work and position themselves to be what they’re capable of being and what we need them to be”.
On the whole, Pickens and Austin each had nice games. Pickens actually had a career game with four receptions for 127 yards and a 71-yard touchdown, the longest play the Steelers have had since 2020. Austin had just one catch for 10 yards, but it was a pretty one, and he was a surprisingly active downfield blocker as well. He also had a 14-yard punt return.
As for Pickett, well, we’ve already begun to analyze his play to death and will continue to do so throughout the week. He’s still making bad throws, bad decisions, and failing to come up in big moments. This isn’t the player that we saw in the preseason, let alone the second half of last season.
It’s like we’ve hit the reset button, going back to before the bye week a year ago. All of that momentum that has built up since then, the Steelers going 7-2 for the remainder of 2022 and then a perfect 3-0 preseason for the first-team offense, is just gone. Like it never happened.
So what next? How do you balance trying to set your young players up for success while not compromising your system and what you’re trying to do? I imagine Steelers fans have some concerns about the individuals who will be tasked with figuring out that precise quandary. I’m just glad I’m not in charge of it, because it’s not an easy thing to do.
