Pittsburgh Steelers fire embattled offensive coordinator Matt Canada as team’s offense falls to 28th in the NFL amid respectable 6-4 start

The Pittsburgh Steelers have fired embattled offensive coordinator Matt Canada amid the team’s respectable 6-4 start.

Steelers’ struggling quarterback Kenny Pickett was just 15 of 28 for 106 yards in Sunday’s 13-10 loss to the rival Cleveland Browns.

The Steelers currently rank 28th in rushing offense at just 283.6 yards per game – worse than all but four NFL teams.

Pittsburgh fans have been calling for Canada’s departure since last season, but former Steelers coach Mike Tomlin has traditionally been averse to such moves in the middle of a season.

Canada has borne the brunt of the criticism as the weeks pass and Pittsburgh continues to sputter. The truth is that there is plenty of blame going around.

The offensive line couldn’t stop Brown’s defensive end Myles Garrett. Canada’s play-calling – such as a first-quarter swing pass to running back Jaylen Warren that didn’t seem to fool any player in an orange helmet – alternated between bizarre and ineffective.

And Pickett seemed to act as if there was a force field fifty feet away, opting for short and (in theory) safe throws that led nowhere. He didn’t top 100 yards until his last play in the game and has two touchdown passes since the calendar turned to October.

Tomlin has steadfastly protected the former Pitt star since promoting him to the starting job a month into the 2022 season. He has pointed to the intangibles Pickett offers – including toughness and perseverance – as evidence of progress, even though Pickett’s numbers indicate just the opposite is true.

There was no scoreboard to hide behind on Sunday. No magic in the final moments that “Fourth Quarter Kenny” has summoned semi-regularly (albeit always briefly) to avert disaster.

Instead, the Steelers were once again exposed by a team in the playoffs, this one being an AFC North rival that just happened to have a rookie quarterback at the helm.

Squint your eyes and there is no need to panic. The upcoming schedule looks manageable, especially with Bengals star Joe Burrow out for the rest of the season.

But at some point, the Steelers are going to have to look like a playoff team when the offense happens on the field. They haven’t done that for long since the height of the “Killer B” era, led by Ben Roethlisberger, Antonio Brown and Le’Veon Bell, in the mid-2010s.

Pickett continues to say the right things. And many long-term NFL starters have taken more than 22 games to find themselves.

Yet most of these starters didn’t play on a team with a top-10 scoring defense with potential Hall of Famers at all three levels, a defense built to win now.

That’s part of the frustration that’s starting to creep in.

Pittsburgh doesn’t need Pickett to become Patrick Mahomes, but a little sustained competence would go a long way. The list of players with more touchdown passes this season than the six Pickett has collected in 10 games includes Bryce Young, Jimmy Garoppolo and Mac Jones.