PITTSBURGH — Less than 24 hours after being eliminated from the playoffs despite an impressive second half of the season, Mike Tomlin stepped to the lectern inside the UPMC Rooney Sports Complex on Monday and was pretty much at a loss for words. He admitted as much.
“I stand before you today with kind of a lack of preparedness for this. To be quite honest with you, I was preparing to prepare to play a game,” Tomlin said.
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Instead, he’s preparing to spend the next couple of days and weeks evaluating everything associated with the organization, with the elephant in the room being offensive coordinator Matt Canada’s future with the team. Canada has finished his second year as coordinator, and it is believed he has one year left on his contract.
The Steelers have historically hired new coordinators on three-year deals. In Tomlin’s tenure, he has had four offensive coordinators: Bruce Arians, Todd Haley, Randy Fichtner and Canada. The first three lasted at least three years each, but all three enjoyed much more success than Canada’s offenses have the past two seasons.
A month or two ago, it seemed like a no-brainer that the Steelers would move on from Canada. Now, it seems to be up in the air.
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Twenty hours removed from when the Steelers were eliminated, Tomlin didn’t tip his hand about what he will ultimately do. Last year was very similar, but there was a certain tone that indicated Canada would be back.
“I thought he got better just like our team got better,” Tomlin said Tuesday. “I’m not going to speculate about him or anyone as I stand here today. … I’m just not there. We have some work to do, but largely I thought he got better in the ways that we got better, so it was encouraging.”
Mike Tomlin on Matt Canada pic.twitter.com/C0upuPRZ6G
— Mark Kaboly (@MarkKaboly) January 9, 2023
Historically, the Steelers move quickly after the season in terms of coaching decisions. A final decision will likely be made by the end of the week. With Canada likely still under contract, there won’t be any formal announcement of his return, if he is retained.
It’s not a simple evaluation for Tomlin, although the negative chatter on the outside would disagree.
Canada has yet to be able to roll out his first choice of scheme since being named coordinator. Last year, he was hamstrung by having a nearly 40-year quarterback in Ben Roethlisberger being limited in his movement and set in his ways.
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This year, he took a revamped offense — three new linemen, a new offensive line coach, a rookie receiver, a second-year running back and tight end, a high-pedigree receiver getting traded midseason, and a rookie quarterback in Kenny Pickett starting the final three months — and tried to make it work under Tomlin’s directive.
Asked Tuesday if the team was conservative by design, Tomlin replied, “Succinctly, yes.”
For lack of a better term, the offense was dumbed down to appease the head coach. Now, Canada wasn’t devoid of blame, with questionable play calling and predictability, but he was working under a directive that came from the top: Don’t turn the ball over, run the ball, let the defense keep you in the game and win it at the end.
“You guys know that I am a fundamentalist,” Tomlin said. “When I got red paint, I paint my barn red, as a coaching cliche. What you saw from us was what was appropriate, particularly over the second half of the year, in an effort to engineer victory.”
There was an improvement from last year.
They were better in time of possession (29:17 in 2021 to 31:13 in 2022), yards per game (315.4 to 322.8), yards per play (4.8 to 4.9), third-down conversions (38.9 percent to 44.9) and rushing yards per game (93.1/122.2). They dipped slightly in red zone percentage and points per game
It was a far cry from last year, when Canada’s offense was worse than in 2020 in at least 10 other offensive categories including points per game, yards per game, third-down percentage and time of possession — not exactly what the decision-makers were anticipating when they promoted Canada after a year as quarterbacks coach to bring his college-tested offense to the pros.
“Man, we all believe in Canada,” Najee Harris said. “You know, everybody’s saying that he calls the same plays, but everybody calls the same plays. You can look everywhere, everybody calls the same plays, just dressed up a different way. If you really know X’s and O’s, that’s really what it is. All that play-calling stuff, I think that’s just a cover-up for just the lack of stuff that we were doing on the field as players. I never bought into any of that. I never really looked into that stuff.
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“Because I know at the end of the day, we’re the ones who got to make the plays. He puts us in the best positions.”
That is what complicates Tomlin’s evaluation and decision on whether to retain Canada.
“I am paid to do tricky,” Tomlin said. “It is all tricky. There are layers to this. It’s not checkers, it is chess, so that’s life in our business.”
There was a substantial improvement over the final nine games of the season. That just happened to be when Canada and Tomlin had a heart-to-heart with the team and the offense.
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Steelers offense before the bye after the bye:
14.13 ppg (last) 20.89 (15th)
299 yds/ gm (28th) 344 (16th)
94.9 rush ypg (25th) 146 (7th)
204 pass ypg (24th) 198 (21st)
33.6% 3rd down conv (28th) 54.3 (BEST)
47.6% red zone efficiency (27th) 54.8 (17th)— Mike DeFabo (@MikeDeFabo) January 9, 2023
“My (trust) definitely started to increase during the year,” guard Kevin Dotson said. “At the beginning of the year, everybody was iffy. Everybody was iffy on the offensive line, everybody was iffy on everything. I started to be more comfortable when I started to see a little different vision. The bye week opened up a lot of our eyes to his true vision because we had a sit-down and what he wanted to happen in the future.”
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What didn’t change was the type of plays Canada called. What he called in Week 1 — or in Week 2, when players were openly questioning the play calling — is what he called in Week 18. The execution was just better.
“I do know that the plays didn’t change all year,” center Mason Cole said. “We’ve been running the same stuff all year. A lot of it was just execution. Earlier in the year, we just weren’t executing. After the bye week, it seemed like we start executing better and better. But the plays didn’t change. You’re not going to change the whole offense in the middle of the season.”
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“He stayed consistent throughout the year,” tight end Zach Gentry said of Canada. “The play calling really didn’t change a whole lot throughout the year in terms of being dramatic. We grew up quite a bit is what happened.”
Canada’s offense moved the ball. There is no denying that. In 13 of 17 games, the Steelers gained more than 300 yards, but they scored 30 points only once and at least 20 points just eight times. In 34 games under Canada, the Steelers have scored 30 points or more only twice.
Scoring has been an issue. Two years removed from the team scoring 50 touchdowns, Canada’s two-year touchdown total is 62. It went down from 34 to 28 this year, which is less than two touchdowns per game.
Whatever Tomlin does with Canada, it will be significant. With Pickett going into his second year, it’s important to establish stability at the coordinator position. If Canada comes back and then they go in a different direction next offseason, what does that do to Pickett’s development?
That’s one reason why Tomlin will be meticulous with his evaluation of Canada.
“I evaluate everything,” Tomlin said. “I will evaluate the season on totality. I will evaluate the components of the season. … There are a lot of discussions to be had. Just rest assured that it will be evaluated in totality but also broken down into smaller pieces and evaluated because that is equally necessary.”
(Photo: Tommy Gilligan / USA Today)
