Saunders: Firing Matt Canada Won’t Help Kenny Pickett, and That’s All That Matters

Legendary Pittsburgh Steelers head coach Chuck Noll has been quoted a lot around these parts lately, with the team enduring a 2-5 start to the 2022 season that does not seem to have an imminent turnaround on its way after rookie quarterback Kenny Pickett has largely failed to provide a winning spark.

“His problems are great, and they are many,” Noll once said of Steelers running back Sidney Thornton. Today, that quote could probably suffice to describe the entire of the Pittsburgh Steelers offense.

The Steelers started the season with veteran Mitch Trubisky at the helm, as part of a low-risk, low-reward plan to win games with running the ball and defense and by minimizing turnovers on offense.That lasted all of three and half weeks before head coach Mike Tomlin pulled the plug on Plan A and installed Pickett as the team’s starting quarterback.

Since then, things have somehow gotten worse.

Pickett has started three games. The only one the Steelers won was when he left with a concussion in Week 7 against Tampa Bay and Trubisky replaced him. With Pickett at the helm for roughly three full games, including that second half against the Jets, the Steelers have scored four touchdowns. 

One of those came after a Minkah Fitzpatrick interception started the team inside the opposing 10-yard line. Another time, a Steven Sims kickoff return set the Pittsburgh offense up at the 11. They went nowhere in three plays and kicked a field goal.

The Steelers are 30th in yards per game, 24th in passing yards per game, 26th in rushing yards per game and 31st in points per game. They are dead last in yards per play and 28th in turnovers. There is literally nothing they are even average at doing as a unit.

The problems are indeed great and many.

And yet, the ability to impart changes on that script from the coaching staff is probably pretty minimal. There is simply not much more the Steelers can do other than keep working and attempting to find incremental improvements.

The overall lack of talent, especially along the offensive line is not going to change. The warts of the skill position group are nearly too long to list: Najee Harris showing a concerning lack of vision and burst, Diontae Johnson’s refusal to catch all the easy passes, Chase Claypool’s suspect slot route-running and inconsistent combat catch ability, it’s the worst group of run-blocking eligibles in the NFL and so on and so forth.

The big quarterback bullet has already been fired. Tomlin isn’t going to blow in the wind, he’s told us over and over again. It was Trubisky, now it’s Pickett. Short of an injury, there won’t be another change at that position.

When Tomlin made that change, he signaled that the team’s focus was no longer on winning games in 2022. He can’t say that out loud, and he won’t. It isn’t the team’s nature to give away any games. Over 40% of the team’s 53-man roster does not have a contract for the 2023 season. Tomlin can’t talk about playing for next year and get any buy-in from the rest of his roster. He’s going to do everything he can to win all the rest of the games on the schedule.

STEELERS PLAYING FOR THE FUTURE

Except change the quarterback. That isn’t going to happen, because the development of Pickett as the team’s next quarterback now supersedes any short-term gain.

Pickett has not been good. He was probably the largest single factor in the Steelers losing to Miami on Sunday. If Trubisky had started that game, they probably would have won.

If the Steelers were approaching this Sunday’s game against the Philadelphia Eagles as a must-win affair, there would probably at least be a conversation about who should be the starting quarterback. There won’t be. It isn’t.

Acknowledging that also eliminates some of the other changes Tomlin could make from serious consideration, as well.

It almost certainly would not be in the best interest of Pickett’s development to make wholesale changes to the Steelers’ offensive scheme or the way they operate. As a rookie NFL quarterback, Pickett has a ton on his plate. He is making perhaps the most difficult transition in all of sports. It is not going particularly well.

That’s not necessarily unexpected. Most quarterbacks struggle in their transition from college to the NFL. Plenty of great quarterbacks, from Josh Allen to Peyton Manning, all the way back to Terry Bradshaw, have been miserable failures as rookie signal callers. There’s no reason to think that a rocky 2022 will sink Pickett’s career.

RELATED: Kenny Pickett Showing the Life of an NFL Rookie Quarterback

But there’s no reason to make things any tougher on him, either. He’s already not thriving in Matt Canada’s exceedingly simple-for-the-NFL scheme. 

Here’s a play from the fourth quarter of Sunday’s loss. The Dolphins show a single-high safety look and Pickett changes the play at the line (seemingly after some in-headset instruction). With the pre-snap read showing a closed middle of the field, the play the Steelers change into isolates the single high safety. He’s claiming the middle of the field, and no one is going there.

The Steelers have Zach Gentry, Najee Harris and Diontae Johnson in more or less one-on-one coverage. George Pickens is open in the classic Cover 3 hole on the numbers between the corner and the free safety. The only player in a route that has two defenders in his area is Chase Claypool. That’s where the ball goes. 

There’s no real pressure on Pickett. But he throws to a guy that isn’t open, and then makes a frankly awful throw that doesn’t even come close enough to let Claypool try to buy a pass interference call. (He’s bad at that anyway. Again, problems: many).

This is one play, but it’s indicative of what’s going on with the Steelers offense. This not that complex of an offensive scheme. The Steelers don’t run all that many plays, the quarterback rarely has any responsibilities at the line. It’s as easy as it’s going to get on a young quarterback. And yet, it’s not going all that well.

So don’t expect the upcoming bye week to be spent with Canada adding layers of complexity to this thing to squeeze some better results out of his unit. That’s not going to help. 

RELATED: Kenny Pickett Explains “Miscommunication” on Game-Sealing Interception

KEEP KENNY PICKETT, KEEP MATT CANADA

You can also forget about the Steelers making a change in play callers, as well.

Imagine trying to make a rookie quarterback, that is struggling in the current scheme, learn a new one in the middle of the season. Or adjust to a new coach and play caller. That’s absurd. It’s not going to happen.

Canada has largely failed as the Steelers’ offensive coordinator. His scheme has not elevated their talent level and it looks like it might not work at the NFL level at all. There seems to be almost no chance he’ll be back for 2023. But his offense wasn’t this bad when Ben Roethlisberger ran it last year. It wasn’t even this bad when Trubisky was running it early in this season.

With Roethlisberger in 2021, they averaged 20.2 points per game. In four game-equivalents with Trubisky this season, they averaged 17.5 points per game. In three game-equivalents with Pickett, they have averaged 12.3 points per game. The skill position players are either static or better over that time. You could make a pretty good argument that the offensive line is playing the best it has in that period right now.

The biggest difference is worse quarterback play. Pickett is dead last in passer rating, tied for 11th-worst in QBR, third-worst in yards per attempt and dead last in adjusted net yards per attempt. His PFF grade is 28th.

He hasn’t been good. He’s been the opposite of good. And that’s OK. The Steelers didn’t go to Pickett because they thought he was going to be good. They went to Pickett because there is hope that he could eventually be good.

That might be in three weeks after the Steelers bye, when the schedule lightens considerably. It might be next season. It might be never. Nobody really knows. But the Steelers have committed to finding out.

They’re not going to do anything else right now that’s going to make that process any more difficult. That includes trading Claypool. It includes replacing Canada. Those are things that, under different circumstances, a 2-5 Steelers team might consider. 

Canada does not appear to be the long-term answer as the Steelers offensive coordinator. But the time to make that change will be in the offseason, giving Pickett plenty of time to absorb a new offense and acquaint himself with a new play-caller. It’s also the time that there’s an actual pool of candidates available that might include someone that has had some success at the NFL level, something the Steelers haven’t had since running Todd Haley out of town.

There’s no point in making a change now, only to make another change in February. There doesn’t appear to be a viable candidate for the job available right now in October. The Steelers don’t fire coaches in the middle of the season, as a rule, anyway. But they’re really not going to have a reason to do it this year.

That might mean some more losses. So might continuing to play Pickett. That’s the course and heading they’ve chosen, and Tomlin isn’t going to blow in the wind.

The problems with the offense are great and they are many. But any NFL fan can tell you that great quarterback play can erase a lot of problems. That’s what the Steelers are hoping to develop this year. Solving the other problems will follow that.