Steelers Burning Questions: What We Learned in Last Year

Last year at this time, we previewed the 2023 Pittsburgh Steelers season with three burning questions that would tell the story of how the season would go.

Now one year later, let’s take a step back and see what the answers were to those questions before we reveal our burning questions for 2024.

What is Kenny Pickett’s Ceiling?

Honestly, I’m not sure that we got the answer to this question in 2023. Pickett struggled in his second season as the Steelers’ starting quarterback, got hurt, got benched, and then got out of town.

The answer is now irrelevant to the Steelers’ chances, but why we didn’t get an answer is certainly an important part of breaking down the team’s 2023 results.

The Steelers had a young quarterback with potential last season. They had an offensive coordinator with no history of success at the NFL level, and minimal history of developing quarterbacks at any level, who had largely failed in two seasons as offensive coordinator.

If the Steelers would have put Pickett with an experienced coordinator with a track record of success, they might’ve been able to actually evaluate his ceiling as an NFL player.

They didn’t do that, firing Matt Canada midway through the season and getting one look at Pickett with his replacements before Pickett was injured. The Steelers eventually turned to Mason Rudolph and didn’t look back.

This year, the Steelers will enter the season with Russell Wilson as their starting quarterback. There’s no question about his ceiling: it’s in the rear-view mirror. They won’t need to do any evaluating or development as long as he’s the team’s starting quarterback.

But Wilson is 35 years old. He won’t be the team’s quarterback for long. Whether it’s Justin Fields or someone else, at some point the Steelers will have to once again turn to a quarterback with an un-established ceiling to lead their team. They’d better learn their lesson from last year.

Pittsburgh Steelers offensive coordinator Matt Canada
watches quarterback Kenny Pickett at OTAs on May 31, 2023. — Ed Thompson / Steelers Now

Is Matt Canada the Guy or the Goat?

The Steelers took a chance on Matt Canada by hiring a college offensive coordinator that had used an innovative offense to win without overwhelming talent. They figured that after the retirement of Ben Roethlisberger, it was probably going to take a while for the Steelers to come up with their next franchise quarterback, and they wanted a coordinator that could find a way to win without one.

Instead of hiring someone that had done that in the past at the NFL level, they hired someone inexperienced that had done it at the collegiate level.

Canada just couldn’t make the jump.

This is an interest case. Hiring innovators is generally not a bad idea. A team that only ever hires experienced coaches is also only ever hiring coaches that have been fired at least once.

The problem for the Steelers was that they hired Canada to do one job, and then asked him to do another. The Steelers didn’t think they’d get a quarterback with upside worth developing after Roethlisberger retired.

They signed Mitch Trubisky with the intention of him being the team’s starting quarterback. They were drafting 22nd overall. They had no expectation of getting the first quarterback in the draft class at that point.

Pickett falling into their laps changed the job fundamentally. Now, they needed a quarterback developer, not someone who could win without one. They took to long to realize that Canada couldn’t be the guy they now needed him to be.

Again now, the Steelers do not have a quarterback with upside. They have paired Wilson with Arthur Smith, an offensive coordinator who has won without elite quarterback play in the past.

That seems like a potentially fruitful pairing. But Smith did not do well with young quarterback Desmond Ridder in his time in Atlanta. The Steelers should keep that in mind if and when they eventually turn to a younger quarterback in the future.

Pittsburgh Steelers safety Minkah Fitzpatrick and defensive coordinator Teryl Austin during OTAs on May 23, 2024. — Ed Thompson / Steelers Now

Can Defense Get Healthy, Stay Elite?

The answer to this one is no, but yes anyway.

The Steelers defense was the farthest thing from healthy in 2023. Cam Hayward suffered what turned out to be a season-killing injury in the season opener. He missed six games and was not the same player when he returned. Minkah Fitzpatrick missed seven games with a hamstring injury. T.J. Watt was injured in the regular season finale and missed the playoff game.

At no point in the entire 2023 season did the Steelers spend a full game with a fully healthy Fitzpatrick, Heyward and Watt.

Despite that, they finished sixth in scoring defense.

A year later, the Steelers defense has added Patrick Queen, Donte Jackson, DeShon Elliott and Payton Wilson to the fold. Joey Porter Jr. and Keeanu Benton will be starters from Week 1. They could be even better than they were last year — if they stay healthy.

“I just think we have a lot of good players,” defensive coordinator Teryl Austin said. “We have good players, guys that love football. It think that guys have a good camaraderie on the field, and watching how they interact off the field, I like how they’re coming together. There’s nothing that would make think differently than I have about the team.”

In many ways, this question will likely be returning in 2024.