When the Pittsburgh Steelers let go of former offensive coordinator Matt Canada last week, they turned the offense over to both running backs coach Eddie Faulkner and quarterbacks coach Mike Sullivan. While Faulkner has the title of offensive coordinator, Sullivan, who previously served as an offensive coordinator for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and New York Giants, calls plays for Pittsburgh. Former Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger is intrigued by the plan, saying on his Footbahlin’ podcast that he’s never seen a team with two coordinators.
“I’ve never seen a team of two coordinators before. Like, one guy calls the plays, one guy does all the game planning, whatever they’re doing. I don’t know,” Roethlisberger said on the podcast.
He added that he worked closely with the offensive coordinator to the point where he didn’t want a quarterbacks coach. But if he had issues with the offensive coordinator, he would go to the quarterbacks coach, who he said served as the mediator. He did say that he worked closely with Mike Sullivan during the final year of his career, where Canada served as offensive coordinator.
It’s definitely a unique arrangement, but it’s one that makes sense for the Steelers. Sullivan has prior experience calling plays, while Faulkner can gain more experience with general game planning and overseeing the whole offense rather than just the running back room. Faulkner has talked about the importance of communication and how big being communicative and detailed is to him, and those communication skills make him a good fit to oversee the offense and work across position groups with players and coaches.
Both Sullivan and Faulkner still have their own position groups to coach and work with in addition to the offense as a whole, so this allows them ample time to work with the guys they need to work with and have a broader role within the offense. I’m sure if the Steelers made the move to fire Canada in the off-season, they’d only have one person working in a more traditional offensive coordinator role. Given the timing of the move though, it would’ve been difficult to appoint only one between Sullivan or Faulkner as the interim while also giving them the time needed to work with the position groups and in the room they’ve worked with all year.
So far, the arrangement has worked out for Pittsburgh, with the Steelers gaining 421 yards of offense in their Week 12 win over the Bengals. One game obviously isn’t a good enough sample size. Sullivan and Faulkner are going to have to show that the unique plan works out by continuing to run the offense well, and more importantly, put points on the board. The Steelers only scored 16 points in the win over Cincinnati, and that’s a number that’s going to have to improve.
While the arrangement isn’t a traditional one, Sullivan and Faulkner seem to be a good team and the offense seems to be in a better place than it was under Canada. We’ll see if they can continue their upward trajectory in the coming weeks.
Watch the full episode of Footbahlin’ below.
