The Pittsburgh Steelers are undergoing unprecedented change as an organization. They let go of offensive coordinator Matt Canada on Tuesday morning in the first in-season move of this magnitude since 1941. This is an opportunity for the offense to re-focus, but it’s going to take everybody to right the ship.
“At the end of the day, whatever’s coming in, play-wise or install-wise, for us as a group, we have to be locked in,” WR Allen Robinson II told reporters Tuesday via a clip posted by 93.7 The Fan’s Twitter account.
Patrick Peterson recently mentioned during his weekly podcast All Things Covered that the offense really needs a leader to emerge to help rally the group. The defense has plenty of those guys between Cameron Heyward, T.J. Watt, and Minkah Fitzpatrick, but the offense is young and many of its players have only been with the team for a short period of time. Robinson may not be a veteran of the Steelers, but he is a veteran of the NFL who has been with four different organizations. That is valuable experience when it comes to helping lead his peers.
“The main thing is just us as players coming together,” Robinson said. “Making sure we are doing our efforts and our parts across the board to be able to clean up different things like that communication stuff. You know, overcommunicating, being on the same page. Doing everything necessary that we need to do to try and get this pushed in the right direction.”
While the defense has gone through a number of injuries to key communicators, the offense featured all 11 starters on the field together in Week 11 for the first time since Week One. Against the Browns, the Steelers had a number of miscommunications on offense. Kenny Pickett and Diontae Johnson were not on the same page on multiple plays. The issues started early in the game—the first offensive drive that nearly resulted in a safety for the Steelers had a play with only 10 men on the field.
“It’s not one particular person or one particular thing, so its going to take everybody to really get that together,” Robinson said.
With Canada out of the picture, the excuses and the shield from blame have been removed. This really puts the onus on the Steelers’ offense to execute and show improvement or the external pressure from the media and the fan base could grow louder than ever.
