The Pittsburgh Steelers finished their first and potentially last season with OC Arthur Smith down in the doldrums. Ending the season with four consecutive games scoring 17 or fewer points, they are limping into the postseason. By year’s end, they ranked 16th in scoring and 23rd in yards. While they protected the football for most of the year, they didn’t do anything else well, nor consistently.
Former Steelers QB Ben Roethlisberger, however, vouched for Smith, as far as he could. He couched his comments in a series of qualifications, not knowing what he doesn’t know, but gave Smith credit for what he has done with an offense very much in need of work when he took over.
“I think Arthur Smith has done a good job”, Roethlisberger said on his Footbahlin podcast, recapping the Steelers’ regular season. “It’s hard to [judge], because if you want to look at the struggles of the offense, you can look at films, but you can’t point the finger all the time. Are there guys open? Sure. Now, does that mean that [Russell Wilson] isn’t seeing them, or does that mean that the play was designed to go to someone else, and that guy just happens to be open”?
Roethlisberger also spent some time breaking down the late deep incompletion between Russell Wilson and George Pickens against the Bengals. He didn’t offer any strong conclusions because it’s impossible to know exactly what Smith and the Steelers called. But overall, he seemed to see a solid offense that lacked execution.
“Is that scheme? Is that player? Did a guy run a wrong route, is why he’s in a spot that the quarterback wasn’t ready for?”, the former Steelers quarterback added. “If [the Steelers] believe in Arthur Smith, which I think they do—I think he does a really good job—I think they’ll stick with him, as long as he doesn’t want to leave, either, and pursue another job”.
Arthur Smith, of course, could want another job after one season with the Steelers. Or at least another title, after serving as the Falcons’ head coach for three years. And I think it goes without saying that he won’t be the head coach of the Steelers in 2025. Not even Steelers fans would want that the way the regular season ended.
While the Steelers’ initial signing of Arthur Smith met with a tepid response, he gained favor with some early success. Starting 4-2 with Justin Fields at quarterback and an upward trajectory helped. The Steelers peaked with a top-10 scoring offense, but they plateaued and then sunk into a valley.
Of course, it is not in their nature to dismiss a coordinator easily. They stuck with Matt Canada for two and a half years. There is virtually no chance the Steelers would fire Arthur Smith. But they might not shed too many tears if another team wanted to hire him.
