Script Fails: How Matt Canada’s Early Play Calls are Sinking Steelers

PITTSBURGH — The Pittsburgh Steelers typically script about their first 10 offensive plays of the game ahead of time. Those plays, chosen by offensive coordinator Matt Canada with the input of his coaching staff and the players, are supposed to be the plays that the Steelers offense feels the best about for that week’s matchup.

Somehow, they’re failing to execute those plays at a spectacular level.

Here are the first 10 plays from the Steelers’ 30-6 loss to the Houston Texans on Sunday:

Harris 3-yard rush.
Pickett incomplete to Freiermuth.
Pickett 8-yard scramble, first down.
Harris 4-yard rush.
Austin 5-yard rush.
Pickett 1-yard rush, first down.
Pickett sacked for 8-yard loss.
Pickett intercepted.
Pickett complete to Pickens for 3 yards.
Harris 3-yard loss.
Pickett complete to Warren for 2 yards, punt.

In 10 plays — supposedly their best 10 plays — they gained 15 yards, two first downs, no touchdowns, and turned the ball over once. For the game, the Steelers averaged 4.0 yards per play. In what was supposed to be their best plays, they averaged 1.5 yards per play.

That discrepancy was far from an aberration. In total, over four weeks, in the first 10 plays of each game, the Steelers have gained a total of 139 yards. That’s an average of 3.5 yards per play. On the season, they’re averaging 4.6 yards per play.

If it wasn’t for one big play against the Raiders, it would be more dramatic than that. Here’s the Las Vegas script:

Harris 5-yard rush.
Harris 4-yard rush
Heyward no gain, punt.
Harris 4-yard rush.
Pickett incomplete to Harris.
Pickett incomplete to Austin, punt.
Pickett incomplete to Pickens.
Warren 3-yard rush.
Pickett complete to Austin for 72-yard touchdown.
Pickett incomplete to Heyward.

Thanks to the long Pickett to Austin touchdown, in the team’s first 10 plays in Las Vegas, they gained 88 yards and while they did not get any first downs, they did score one touchdown.

Here’s the Browns game:

Pickett complete to Robinson for 7 yards.
Pickett incomplete to Robinson.
Pickett intercepted.
Narris 3-yard loss.
Harris no gain.
False start penalty, 5-yard loss, then Pickett complete to Warren for 13 yards, punt.
False start penalty, 5-yard loss, then Pickett complete to Olszewski for 1-yard loss, Olszewski fumbled and Cleveland recovered.
Pickett complete to Robinson for 5 yards.
Harris 2-yard rush.
Pickett complete to Warren for 30 yards.

On those 10 plays, they gained 39 yards (3.9 yards per play), and one first down while turning the ball over twice. They averaged 4.8 yards per play in the entire game.

Just to complete this sad essay, here are the first 10 plays from Week 1:

Pickett complete to Pickens for 6 yards.
Pickett complete to Austin for 1-yard loss.
Pickett sacked for 10-yard loss, punt.
Harris 2-yard loss.
Pickett complete to Austin for 7 yards.
Pickett intercepted.
Pickett complete to Robinson for 2 yards.
Harris no gain.
Pickett incomplete to Johnson, punt.
Pickett complete to Warren for 5-yard loss.

That’s 1o plays for a net 3-yard loss, no first downs and a turnover. The Steelers averaged 3.9 yards per play in the entire game.

In total, that’s 139 yards, one touchdown, two first downs and four interceptions in the first 10 plays of the Steelers’ games.

Matt Canada infamous said to the CBS crew broadcasting this Sunday’s game that his offense is not designed to play from behind. That makes its inability to have any early success all that more crippling.

The players I talked to couldn’t seem to come up with an answer for why it keeps happening.

“I don’t know,” running back Jaylen Warren said. “I don’t know, to be honest.”

“I think that’s above my pay grade,” tackle Broderick Jones said. “I really can’t comment on that too much because I really don’t know. We’ve just got to be better as an offense.”

“We’ve just got to execute better,” wide receiver Allen Robinson II said. “I think that’s the main thing. We can’t warm up to it. We can’t go on and feel it out. We’ve got to be in attack mode and try to impose our will on defenses from the start of the game.”

The plays that Canada is picking as the team’s best and most effective plays each week have been anything but. They’ve turned the ball over more than they’ve gotten a first down with those scripts, and for a team that doesn’t want to play from behind, they’ve yet to score on their opening two possessions of a game this season.

There are many problems with the way the offense is operating, and the blame for those problems lies in many places, but the selection of plays for the game-starting script is uniquely the responsibility of Canada. What they’re doing in the rest of those games is working better. There are clearly better plays or plays that the offense is more able to execute that for some reason, just aren’t being selected.

It’s hard to change an entire playbook or the character of an offense in the middle of the season, but this is a critical area that can be improved and must as the Steelers move forward.