The Pittsburgh Steelers let go of Matt Canada, their offensive coordinator of the last three seasons, on Tuesday morning. While this mostly affects the offensive side of the ball, football is the ultimate team sport and leadership changes matter to a certain extent for the whole team. Canada’s ouster came on the heels of a miserable offensive performance against the Cleveland Browns that saw the Steelers lose, 13-10, via a last second field goal.
The defense did its job throughout the game forcing punts, intercepting the ball once, and only allowing 13 points. Ultimately, the unit couldn’t withstand one final drive with just over one minute remaining in the game and the Browns marched down into field goal range to win. The offense continually letting down the defense has got to be frustrating for the defense, right? Current Steelers CB Patrick Peterson and former Steelers CB Bryant McFadden sat down for their weekly podcast All Things Covered to discuss this topic.
“Man, with me, to be honest with you, I’m not frustrated because as defenders, obviously it’s our job to control what we can control,” Peterson said.
Peterson is obviously a longtime NFL veteran, and he has been on some pretty shaky teams in his career, particularly with the Arizona Cardinals. He probably came to terms with controlling what he can control throughout that time.
“No matter how good the offense is or how bad it is, it’s gonna always be a defensive team,” Peterson said. “We carry it on our shoulders each and every week. No matter what the offense does, we have goals of ourselves of going out there, taking the ball away first and foremost and scoring ourselves. When you have guys having that type of mentality, we can give a rat’s ass what happens on the other side of the ball.”
To some, this may come off as an apathetic stance that doesn’t care about the overall team, but Peterson is just stating the importance of staying focused on the defense’s task and not letting game circumstance change its goals. As Mike Tomlin would say, he’s not grading that group on a curve.
