Pittsburgh Steelers offensive coordinator Matt Canada is no stranger to criticism — that comes with the territory when the unit that he coaches has finished 26th and 21st in scoring in the NFL in his first two seasons.
But there have been two fairly specific criticisms levied against Canada in the wake of the Steelers’ 30-7 loss to the San Francisco 49ers on Sunday.
Former Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger said that he thought Canada should have done more to get struggling quarterback Kenny Pickett going, by calling some quarterback-friendly play calls.
“I remember with Coach Randy Fichtner, we always had like a go-to play,” Roethlisberger said on his podcast this week. “Just like, I’m a little off today. Maybe it was going no-huddle where like I was calling plays that I felt comfortable with or like two or three plays that are just like a ball out of your hand. Maybe it’s a screen or where I throw a ball to a wide receiver, and he breaks a 10-yarder. Let your playmakers make plays.”
The other came from ESPN analyst Dan Orlovsky, who noted that Canada called the same route combo several times in the game against the 49ers.
The @steelers have to stop running the same pass concept
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OverAgain….
— Dan Orlovsky (@danorlovsky7) September 12, 2023
In his Thursday briefing with the media, Canada started to answer a question about the first topic, and might have cleared both of them up.
Asked directly if the Steelers have plays that Pickett likes that they might call when he’s struggling, Canada said they do and they called them.
“We do those things like everybody does,” he said. “We’ve got a list of plays that he likes that we try to go to to get going. For whatever reason, and not just him, there’s a multitude of things that happened. Kenny is our quarterback and that happens, when you don’t play well, the quarterback gets it. And he admittedly could have maybe done this or that, made a throw a little bit better. But we obviously went to those plays.”
Canada said that started during the team’s two-minute drill at the end of the first half, where Pickett led the offense on a 95-yard touchdown drive with under two minutes and no timeouts. But for whatever reason, that success didn’t carry into the second half when Canada returned to those concepts.
“That got us to cut it to two scores and there was a little bit of, OK, run those plays that he likes, and you kind of go back to those if he feels good with them,” he said. “We just didn’t continue (to execute).