Matt Canada is out. That’s old news. Now the question becomes: what can Mike Sullivan do? While not the officially the Pittsburgh Steelers’ interim offensive coordinator, Sullivan will be the team’s newest play caller and the voice in Kenny Pickett’s ear throughout today’s game against the Cincinnati Bengals.
Firing Canada was a historic move for the franchise, a first, and a product of two-and-a-half years of underwhelming results. So what is Tomlin looking for with the next guy? In his weekly chat with Steelers.com’s Bob Labriola, Tomlin was asked, broadly speaking, what makes a good play caller.
“One who’s a step ahead in terms of the opposing play caller,” Tomlin told Labriola. “One who builds concepts off concepts and sets up opportunity. Someone who has a personality, and having a personality is important, because that’s the cohesion, that’s the fluidity that I’m talking about. But also training the group in such a way that you’re somewhat of a moving target in terms of the things that you do off of those things.”
Building those concepts off each other is a key element to being an effective coach. Football is a big chess game with the goal of making the other side catch up. Once they figure out how to defend one thing, you work off it. That can come in many forms. As a simple example, many effective offenses pair their zone run scheme with play-action. The line’s action looks the same run or pass. Once the defense starts to bite on the run, coaches hit them with the play fake to boot out and get easy yards in the passing game.
Or perhaps a coach calling slants throughout the day hits the defense with a sluggo route – a slant ‘n go – that takes advantage of the corner’s aggression anticipating the slant and goes for a big play over the top. And so on. These are called “constraint plays,” concepts that build off each other.
That’s what the Steelers will be looking for from Sullivan. Canada struggled with the idea throughout his tenure, either trying to go back to plays that looked open too quickly without dressing them up any differently or simply failing to build off the core concepts on his offense. The Steelers’ passing game wasn’t layered and routes were too independent of each other, asking receivers to win through pure ability without the scheme creating opportunity.
Asking Sullivan (and interim OC Eddie Faulkner) to fix this offense in a Sunday is unrealistic. But like the building blocks Tomlin’s talking about, this offense needs to make some steps today. Players have to execute, there’s no question about that, but the scheme has to help elevate their play and put this offense in the best position to succeed, too.
