What Will it Take for Matt Canada to be Fired?

Once the season started, I dedicated myself to remain as positive as possible regarding the Steelers, even after a 30-7 loss to start the season. But, after a 20+ drubbing against a rookie QB and the Texans…there isn’t anything to be positive about. After a reasonably good performance against the Raiders, the Steelers offense was back to standard and put up a measly 6 points and to rub a little salt in the wound, Kenny Pickett went down with a concerning knee injury. 

The prospect of having to watch Mitchell Trubisky the rest of the season is aggravating to say the least, but yesterday perfectly encapsulated the real issue in Pittsburgh. Matt f**ing Canada. While you can’t directly point the finger at Canada for Pickett’s injury, calling a shotgun pass on 4th and 1 after consistently running the ball for 4- and 5-yard chunks the entire drive, is asking for trouble. Kenny should have never been in that situation. 

I am not opposed to throwing the ball in that situation, but pure shotgun pass? No play action? By no means am I excusing Kenny’s performance to this point. He has looked uncertain, shaky, and turnover prone, but I can’t put the blame entirely on him. Kenny has his limitations. That isn’t groundbreaking news, but it is hard to tell if those limitations are fatal flaws or exacerbated by a poor offensive system. 

Matt Canada consistently runs the same series of plays every week and has for the last two years. When one of his plays does work, he will run it again, same formation, same routes, no changes, as if NFL teams don’t watch film. He did that on Sunday when Kenny threw an interception to Steve Nelson.  It was the same play Kenny threw a touchdown against the Raiders, Canada just flipped the formation and thought that would fool them. His offense is predictably mediocre. They aren’t even creative bad plays. They are just bad plays.

Evaluating Kenny Pickett fairly isn’t possible without firing Matt Canada and giving Kenny a real NFL level offensive coordinator. That leads to a question all Steelers fan’s keep asking, what is it going to take to fire this guy?  Only three people know the reason: Mike Tomlin, Art Rooney, and The Almighty himself. I am sure Canada is wondering why he still has a job too.

Typically, I am not a fan of calling for people’s jobs. I don’t want anyone to be unemployed and I am not rooting for bad things to happen to Matt Canada, but at this point, there is no other choice. It has been 3 years and the Steelers points per game has gone down in all three. The Steelers have far too much offensive talent to score 0 touchdowns against the Texans. We have given Canada the benefit of the doubt, but now there is no doubt.

He has never called a game where the Steelers produce more than 400 yards of total offense, he has only scored 30 or more points 1 time, and in 2023 the Steelers have had 4 redzone snaps. Not enough? With Matt Canada leading the offense the Steelers are 1-15 when their opponent scores 22 points or more. The average points per game across NFL teams last year…was 22. Canada even admitted that this offense was not built to come from behind. It is truly dark days when I agree with Poni but that is just a mind-boggling comment. I mean who says that? 

This offense is in the bottom third in the league in essentially every statistical category: Total yards, yards per game, rushing yards per game, passing yards per game, total touchdowns, total first downs, 3rd down conversion percentage, time of possession, and they have 0, not one, not a single rushing touchdown. There is zero effort to establish a running game, no creativity, useless motions, jet sweeps, three and outs and punts.

There has been a lot of conversation about the defense struggling this year which frankly, I am not interested in hearing. It all comes from the offensive struggle.  First of all, in today’s NFL, there are only 1 or 2 truly dominating defenses. Now it's mostly about bending and not breaking in the red zone and creating a couple splash plays for your offense. Which the Steelers do. In fact, the two games they won this year were directly related to the defense. They even had to score for the offense in Week 2. 

Winning in the NFL is about complimentary football, and the Steelers just aren’t doing that. The Steelers defense is on the field nearly 60% of the total snaps not including special teams. They are just on the field too much. The Steelers want to be a defense first team, which is fine, but if that’s the case you can’t be last in the league in time of possession, and the majority of or snaps can't be defense, punts, and Chris Boswell (only bright spot all year). 

Beyond statistics and rankings, and even winning, keeping Matt Canada runs the risk of Mike Tomlin losing his team, which is something we have never seen. Videos are already circulating on X of center Mason Cole being visibly frustrated regarding the choice to throw the ball on the play Kenny was injured. Najee Harris was also visibly frustrated when he was taken out of the game despite running the ball well. Mike Tomlin himself was showing his emotions on the sidelines and in his fiery press conferences, something else we rarely see.

I am not 100% convinced that Tomlin is in full control of the firing or retention of Matt Canada. I think that choice is rooted in “The Steeler Way”. I am a staunch defender of Mike Tomlin and of the way the Steelers have operated organizationally over the past few decades, but you can’t let the league pass you by. Yes, patience versus knee jerk reactions is a way to stay consistent, but this is much different. This is costing you games and may cost you the team. Keeping Canada is going to be a cancer to team culture, if it's not already. 

I am no offensive genius, and I couldn’t tell you the first thing about NFL offensive keys or schemes, but just looking at the plays the Steelers are running, they are very elementary. The players clearly don’t believe in the plays they are running either. No one, no matter their position, looks like they are confident in what they are doing, or even knows what is expected of them in the offense.

I understand timing is everything in the NFL and firing Canada the week before you play the Ravens is a recipe for another blow out, but you’re going to keep getting boat raced with Canada at the helm. The Steelers have a bye week following the Ravens game this Sunday, and regardless of the offensive performance, Canada MUST be relieved of his duties. If he isn’t, players will likely stop believing in what they are doing, stop listening to Tomlin’s messages and things will become incredibly dysfunctional. Just letting Matt Canada’s contract expire isn’t good enough. Pay the fine and buy him out. Shit Steelers fans will start a GoFundMe and pay it for you. 

Keeping Canada is wasting the 2023 season and is wasting a year of some very talented careers on both sides of the ball. 

The preseason performance was obviously a fluke, there is no “mojo” to get back, no week of preparation or game planning can fix this offense. It is time to face the music for whoever made the decision to keep Canada, whether it be Tomlin or Rooney. You hired the wrong guy. The changes promised in post-game speeches are mostly lip service at this point. Forget the message to the fans. It isn’t fair to the guys on your team whose livelihood is contingent on winning games in this league. 

This is not complicated. Matt Canada is woefully unqualified to be an NFL coach, period, and if they can’t or won’t fire him, they are openly admitting that winning football games is not a priority for the Pittsburgh Steelers in 2023.