When it comes to a quarterback-offensive coordinator relationship, things don’t always click right away. While it got off to a great start in 2024 with Russell Wilson and Arthur Smith, the offense regressed down the stretch. That led to questions about their chemistry and reported disagreements behind closed doors.
Conventional logic might say that running it back with Wilson and Smith at this point is a bad idea given the reported tension between the two, but one former NFL player thinks things could improve in a second year.
“For Russ, it’s going to be hard to find more stability than what the Pittsburgh Steelers have to offer,” Chris Canty said via ESPN’s Unsportsmanlike. “I think another year with Arthur Smith, more familiarity with his system, his scheme, leads to less tension in that relationship. And a healthy George Pickens down the stretch without interruption, I think you have a different result.”
Canty thinks the Steelers should ultimately lean toward moving on, but he sees some merit in the idea of continuity with Wilson and the benefits that could come with him getting another year in Smith’s system.
Wilson didn’t even get a full offseason in Year 1 due to the weighted sled debacle. He missed almost the entire training camp and the first six games of the season. Chances are good that Arthur Smith was starting to shift his offense to cater to Justin Fields’ abilities throughout those first six weeks and then he had to revert back to Wilson on the fly. It worked for a time but fell off once Pickens got injured and the offensive production came screeching to a halt.
Could they find a middle ground or have some additional trust in each other to allow Wilson a little more freedom within the offense in Year 2?
I think back to the stretch of 2012 through 2014 for Todd Haley in his first three seasons with the team as the offensive coordinator.
In 2012, the Steelers ranked 21st in the NFL for total offense in Haley’s first season in the role. There was reported tension at the time with Ben Roethlisberger as Haley was working to get the ball out quicker to protect him from the hits he had been taking for years prior. In Year 2, they were 20th in the league. By their third season together, it was the top offense in the league in terms of yards gained.
This isn’t to say this situation will follow the exact same arc, it’s just to show that early tension in a QB-OC relationship isn’t the end of the world and continuity can eventually lead to increased success. There were obviously other factors at play back then like the emergence of Antonio Brown and Le’Veon Bell and that offensive line starting to come together. The Steelers’ current offensive line has plenty of pedigree. It wouldn’t be surprising to see that turn into a real strength of the team in the next season or two, which could make the offense look quite different from the way things looked in 2024.
People are mostly looking at Wilson’s results over the final five or six weeks. Fair enough. But what about when he was tracking for a 17-game pace to match even the best seasons of his potential Hall of Fame career? That’s in there somewhere. That’s the debate the Steelers are likely having behind closed doors.
