Though the Pittsburgh Steelers made a coaching change, their offense isn’t trying to reinvent the wheel over the next seven weeks. In the middle of a season, throwing out the playbook and starting over isn’t feasible. That much is obvious to QB Kenny Pickett, who spoke with reporters Wednesday for the first time since Matt Canada was fired.
“You can’t have wholesale changes at this point,” Pickett said via The Trib’s Joe Rutter. “We’re going to run the system we’ve been using.”
Conceptually, don’t expect the Steelers’ offense to be radically different under new interim OC Eddie Faulkner and play caller Mike Sullivan. Canada’s offense has been ingrained for years now and trying to uproot that mid-week and midseason will do more harm than good.
Still, tweaks and changes can and need to be made. If they aren’t, then there will have been no point to firing Canada. How teams game plan, how they self-scout, and how they call and sequence plays in-game can all be impacted by having different people in charge even if the playbook remains identical.
“They’re gonna put their wrinkle in on it,” Pickett said of Faulkner and Sullivan via the team website. “On what they wanna run and when they wanna run it.”
Sitting at 6-4, the Steelers need a spark and coaching staff changes can provide that. The Buffalo Bills’ offense looked much stronger in its first game after firing OC Ken Dorsey, routing the New York Jets (who don’t have a bad defense, just a lousy offense) 32-6. QB Josh Allen threw for 275 yards and three touchdowns in the victory as the offense racked up nearly 400 yards.
The Las Vegas Raiders turned over nearly their entire building, firing HC Josh McDaniels, GM Dave Ziegler, and OC Mick Lombardi. It boosted the spirits and the play of the locker room, the Raiders winning two of their three games since the change. Their only loss came by narrow margins on the road against the heavily favored Miami Dolphins, 20-13.
Change alone doesn’t guarantee better outcomes. But the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. The Steelers will hope their changes, radical for them, are what the offense needs to make a stretch run and return to the playoffs.
