Never in my life have I witnessed a coordinator so universally criticized as the Pittsburgh Steelers’ Matt Canada. In his third season with the team in the role of offensive coordinator, he has been grilled on a weekly basis in both the local and national media. Chants calling for his firing have been a frequent occurrence, even at unexpected venues. Multiple petitions have been initiated in a vain attempt to get him fired.
None of it will work any better than his critics believe his offense works. And you can count Brett Kollmann among those critics, who picked his scheme apart in a new video he posted last night on YouTube entitled, “The Steelers Will Make You Hate Football.”
Really, it would have been more accurate to the content to say Matt Canada instead of the Steelers, because that was his target. And his overarching conclusion was clear. “Truth be told, after studying this offense in-depth, I don’t even think it’s fair to judge Kenny Pickett’s future as an NFL quarterback as long as he is playing in this offense. The evaluation cannot possibly be completed under these circumstances”, he said.
The second-year quarterback hasn’t played great, relying primarily on fourth-quarter heroics in games in which the defense has been able to keep the score down. He has only thrown more than one touchdown pass in a game just once, and has amongst the lowest touchdown rates in NFL history.
Obviously, a lot goes into that beyond just the coordinator, and there is plenty of blame to go around. but the limitations of Canada’s system only serve to magnify that execution errors that exist within it, because there are so few chances for success creates by the scheme.
“Everything is so much harder than it needs to be from a schematic perspective”, Kollmann concluded, saying that it’s not built to help players win matchups. “It’s almost as if Canada is calling the game like defenses still play spot-drop zone like it’s the 90s or something, and that receivers could just settle into zones to get free catches like in Madden. That’s not how defense works in the pros in 2023”.
One thing he focused on, which you can see in more detail by watching the full video linked to in the article, is the use of motion and play action and how the Steelers are well behind the curve in using that to create spaces that defenses today otherwise will not provide.
Another early point he made was the Steelers’ approach to first and second down. Their lack of explosion to avoid third-down situations is at odds with what the best offenses in the league are doing. Their strong tendency to run on 2nd and long also allows defenses to tee up and sell out in those situations to create negative plays.
“This Steelers offense is almost deliberately ancient in its approach, and at this point Canada is purposely putting all of the burden on Kenny Pickett and his receivers to just go out there and win games by themselves”, Kollmann concluded.
While he did not quite compare Pickett to Miami Dolphins QB Tua Tagovailoa, he did compare their situations. He noted that we did not get a clearer picture of who he could be until head coach Mike McDaniel. Similarly, he believes we won’t know who Pickett is until somebody other than Canada is running the show.
“For all we know, Pickett could be the next Jared Goff, and I don’t mean that in a bad way at all”, he said. “We’re never gonna know the answer as long as this is the system that he’s playing in. It’s just impossible”.
