Saunders: Steelers Move to Plan B for Ben Roethlisberger Succession

PITTSBURGH — The Pittsburgh Steelers had a plan for what the team was supposed to look like after the retirement of star quarterback Ben Roethlisberger. The implementation of that plan began even before Roethlisberger officially announced that he was hanging up his cleats in January.

Four weeks into the post-Roethlisberger era, it’s clear that plan has failed.

First, let’s rewind. We can see the idea of the way the team was supposed to look this fall starting at the beginning of the 2021 offseason.

The Steelers hired Matt Canada as offensive coordinator, with full knowledge that he and Roethlisberger would not be a good fit together. Canada’s offense demanded some level of mobility that Roethlisberger didn’t have. Roethlisberger wanted no parts of doing the things that Canada needed to implement to make his scheme work.

The reason to do that is the hope that Canada’s offense could do in the NFL what it did in college: find success without that success being attached to top-flight quarterback play.

At Pitt, Canada turned James Conner and Nate Peterman into the greatest offense the Panthers had ever seen. At Wisconsin, it was running back Montee Ball, not quarterback Joel Stave that was the star. At NC State, Canada helped turn Florida washout Jacoby Brissett into an NFL player, despite never throwing for 3,000 yards. That was the hope of hiring Canada.

To improve the chances of being able to succeed on offense without high-level quarterback play, the Steelers drafted Najee Harris with the hope that he could be the kind of workhorse running back that minimizes the impact the quarterback has on the offense. Think of the Tennessee Titans with Derek Henry and Ryan Tannehill or the Indianapolis Colts with Jonathan Taylor and Carson Wentz as a blueprint for what the Steelers were trying to build.

But it goes one step further than that. The reason the Steelers thought they could pull off success with that kind of offense was the ability of their defense to dominate games. The Titans don’t have a T.J. Watt or Minkah Fitzpatrick or Cam Heyward.

The Steelers continued to prioritize the building up of that unit, re-signing Watt and Fitzpatrick to record deals in back-to-back offseason and bringing in veterans Melvin Ingram, Myles Jack, Larry Ogunjobi, Joe Schobert, Levi Wallace and Ahkello Witherspoon to attempt to shore up perceived shortcomings. The result is that the Steelers have the highest-paid defense in the NFL this season.

The totality of the post-Ben plan, then becomes clear. The Steelers wanted to use the time when they were not spending big money on a quarterback in the immediate aftermath of the Roethlisberger Era to spend big on defense, and use a creative scheme and a workhorse running back to minimize the impact of reduced quarterback ability on the offense. Combine that with one of the top kickers in the NFL (also signed to a record contract) and the Steelers had a plan to compete as a team without top-level quarterback play.

Note that drafting and playing a quarterback from the first round of the 2022 NFL Draft was not, and could not be expected to be part of the plan. The Steelers still expected to compete through the end of Roethlisberger’s tenure, and expected to be able to compete even without him. That means this plan was intended to be executed without having the kind of high first round pick usually needed to find a franchise quarterback.

Even a month before the 2022 NFL Draft, Kenny Pickett being available to the Steelers with the No. 20 overall pick was considered to be unlikely. In fact, the Steelers seemed poised to have their third or fourth pick of the 2022 quarterback class, not the first. That’s why the Steelers went out in free agency and secured the services of Mitch Trubisky.

When Pickett fell into the team’s lap, the Steelers jumped at the chance to take the Pitt quarterback, but that didn’t necessitate a full-scale divergence from the plan. Pickett could wait and learn behind Trubisky and if at some point, he appeared to be capable of being the kind of franchise quarterback that didn’t need all of the above to lead the team to success, they could make changes at that point.

That’s why it was reported before the season that the Steelers had no intention of playing Pickett this year. They were sticking to the succession plan that had been put in place long before Roethlisberger retired.

So why, three and a half weeks later, did Mike Tomlin decide to make a change at quarterback and abandon that plan? The short answer is that it wasn’t working. In fact, outside of the play of Chris Boswell, basically none of it was working.

Canada’s offensive scheme has not been a talent enhancer at the NFL level. Canada doesn’t deserve blame for all of the problems that the Steelers offense has had over the last two seasons, but it’s clear that he is not going to be able to make the Steelers offense perform at a significantly higher level than its talent level suggests it should based on scheme alone. His scheme still might work in the NFL, but it’s not going to work like they hoped it would.

Harris has shown signs of the ability to be a dominant running back, but has not been able to fully fill that role because of issues with the offensive line. The Steelers are not a strong run-blocking team, and Harris, used to the holes paved by an Alabama unit that routinely overmatched every opponent, has not had the same kind of success running behind the Steelers’ beleaguered unit that he did in college. That’s not to say Harris has been bad or useless, but it’s clear that he alone, without the help of greatly enhanced offensive line play, is not going to be able to take meaningful pressure off the Steelers’ quarterback position.

The defense hasn’t been as good as advertised. Yes, Watt is hurt, but even before that injury, the Steelers just did not look like a defensive unit capable of holding down the opposition for quarters on end while its scuffling offense figured things out. The defense hasn’t been bad, but at 22.5 points per game allowed, it’s basically dead even in the middle of the pack. It would take a significantly improved performance from that unit to have hope that they could drag a bad offense to success, and the absence of Watt makes that feel impossible right now.

Tomlin abandoned a plan that had none of its facets working at the present time, and took a risk by turning the offense over to Pickett.

Pickett comes with a significantly higher ceiling than what Trubisky brought to the table, but also carries a lower floor. He showed in his first half of game play how he can provide better results (two touchdowns in one half) and also worse ones (three interceptions and nearly lost a fumble on a bad toss.)

But that risk is required because it’s clear that with the rest of the plan not working, the Steelers are going to need to have better than mediocre quarterback play to have any team success in 2022. The defense isn’t good enough, Harris isn’t good enough and Canada isn’t good enough to win without more from the quarterback position than Trubisky can offer.

It’s something of a last-gasp move for the 2022 season. There’s no backup offensive coordinator to turn things over to. The mistake of thinking Harris could succeed without a line in front of him can’t be un-made. The defense keeps getting more beat up, not less.

But it’s also the same thing that Tomlin should do if the was giving up on the 2022 season entirely. It’s clear that the Steelers Plan A for replacing Roethlisberger did not work. Pickett represents Plan B. If he can become a franchise quarterback at the NFL level, then all of the machinations of the last two offseasons weren’t necessary.

If he can’t, then the Steelers don’t even have a Plan C at the current moment, so it’s probably just as good to find out sooner rather than later.