It hasn’t been a great year for fans of the Pittsburgh Steelers, and with Christmas only two days away, there is a lot of stuff Steelers fans are asking Santa Claus for. Yesterday, Jared Dubin of CBS Sports put out a Christmas wish list for each NFL team, and for Pittsburgh, he wrote: “A real offensive coordinator.”
Steelers fans have been wanting a new offensive coordinator for a long time. Since 2019, the Steelers offense has been on a consistent downward slide. But in the past three seasons under offensive coordinator Matt Canada, things have gotten really dire. In the past three years, Pittsburgh has averaged only 20.2 (2021), 18.1 (2022), and 15.9 (2023) points per game.
This consistent downward trend led to the Steelers firing Canada mid-season this year, and even that did nothing to help the Steelers floundering offense. Interim offensive coordinators Eddie Faulkner and Mike Sullivan have not been able to do too much different with Canada’s playbook and fans are fed up, as right now the offense looks almost exactly the same.
“The Matt Canada era was an epic disaster in just about every way,” wrote Dubin. “The post-Matt Canada era looked fun for one week but has since come crashing back down to earth. The Steelers need to make significant changes on offense this coming offseason, and they can’t be afraid to venture outside their comfort zone with a creative hire.”
Given Canada was fired mid-season, it was unrealistic to expect wholesale changes to the offense. But what fans are watching right now is still a disaster. The Steelers have to go outside the organization in making their next offensive coordinator hire as the last two hires, Randy Fichtner and Canada, were both promoted from within, and the results were not pretty.
Canada and Fichtner were not modern offensive coordinators, and now, with a young quarterback in Kenny Pickett and maybe a new quarterback next year if the team does want to bring in competition for Pickett, it is time for Pittsburgh to bring in a young, bright offensive mind.
There has been a lot that has gone wrong this season, and Steelers fan’s Christmas lists are multiple pages. But certainly, at the top is a new offensive coordinator. With how things have been going post-Canada, the Steelers cannot promote either Faulkner or Sullivan. They have to make a creative, inspiring hire, as Dubin said. If the Steelers don’t do that, they’ll once again be sitting in stagnant water, wondering why they aren’t showing any signs of being a Super Bowl contender.
