The Steelers fired besieged offensive coordinator Matt Canada, the team announced through a statement from Mike Tomlin early Tuesday morning.
Eddie Faulkner, the running backs coach, will become the new coordinator, and Mike Sullivan, the quarterbacks coach, will handle the play calling.
In his weekly news conference Tuesday at the UPMC Rooney Sports Complex, Tomlin said the decision to fire Canada was "mine and mine alone" and that it was one that was "not taken lightly."
"I've got a lot of respect for Matt, personally and professionally," Tomlin said. "It was not easy, but I thought that it was necessary. This is a result-oriented business and to be short, the improvements were not rapid enough or consistent enough for us to proceed. You've got to score touchdowns in this business. You've got to win games in this business, and the totality of it has us where we are today."
This is rarified air for the Steelers organization. This is the first in-season coaching change with a head coach or coordinator since 1941, when half-owner Bert Bell fired himself as the coach.
The Steelers are 6-4 and sit in a playoff position entering Week 12 of the NFL season, but they continue to struggle mightily on offense. The Steelers rank 28th in the NFL in yards per game (280.1) and points per game (16.6). They have scored 14 offensive touchdowns in 10 games, have been out-scored, 195-166, and have been out-gained, 3,676-2,801.
"There's a lot of layers to it, obviously," Tomlin said. "Our most-recent performance is a component of it, but I just think that you know when you're there, to be blunt and short about the answer. Not saying it flippantly, not taking the situation lightly at all, but just having been in the role that I've been in for some time, you just know when you're there and it's a totality and a myriad of variables."
Since the start of the 2021 season, the Steelers offense ranks 31st in total yards and 31st in points scored across the league. In 44 games under Canada's direction, the Steelers posted zero games of 400-plus yards, one game of 300-plus passing yards, and two games of 30-plus points.
Canada's final act came when the Steelers scored 10 points in a loss to the Browns Sunday in Cleveland. Kenny Pickett completed 15 of 28 passes for 106 yards, and more questions have arose of whether the former first-round pick is the desired quarterback of the future for the Steelers as a result of visible regression under Canada's tutelage.
"I just want to see points," Tomlin said regarding what he wants to see from the offense now. "I want to engineer victory more fluidly, and points do that."
Tomlin reinforced Pickett will remain the Steelers' starting quarterback. He said he doesn't know if this move will impact the evaluation of Pickett beyond this season.
Pickett is 13-9 in his career as a starter since being drafted in the first round in 2022 out of Pitt. He is averaging 179.4 passing yards per game and has completed 61.9% of his throws for a 79.2 passer rating. With his performance on Sunday, he became the first quarterback since Christian Ponder in 2012 to complete 50 or more passes and total fewer than 160 passing yards in four consecutive games, per Sharp Football.
Now, the reins of the Steelers' offense will be a joint effort of Sullivan and Faulkner.
Sullvan, 56, was the offensive coordinator for the Buccaneers in the 2012 and 2013 seasons and the Giants in the 2016 and 2017 seasons.
"Really good, solid communicator, highly organized, really consistent, has got experience as a play caller, has got experience as a play caller in less-than-ideal circumstances," Tomlin said of Sullivan. "I think he's been an interim play caller before. It's just a good means of calling upon guys who have natural skillsets in those areas or experience in those areas without disrupting the apple cart too much and us still pushing forward as a collective."
Tomlin said Faulkner, 46, has a "real, steady voice and demeanor" and is "really solid" in his current role as running backs coach. Faulkner has not been an offensive coordinator since his time at Ball State University in 2009, and he took over as their head coach on an interim basis in 2010 after a midseason firing.
"I love the way he has managed his room in the years that he has been here, through the good times, bad times, et cetera," Tomlin said of Faulkner. "There's always great clarity in that space. He's natural with people from a communication standpoint and a consistency of communication standpoint, and so I've got no reservations of his ability to do it. I think when we all ascend in coaching, we take our experience and expand it. I was a secondary coach when I became a coordinator of defense. I ran the defensive unit very similar to how I ran the defensive back room. When I became a head coach I ran the team in the same spirit and communicated in the same way that I ran the defensive unit. And so that's why I'm confident. I've seen how he's handled that position group, and oftentimes that's a reflection of how he's going to handle a larger body."
Faulkner having a role as the coordinator would indicate the Steelers will continue to model their offense off of Najee Harris, Jaylen Warren and the rest of the running game. Harris was vocal after Sunday's game about whether the offense was fixable with seven games left in the 2023 season.
“Is it fixable? Yeah it’s fixable. Are we going to fix it? S---," Harris said. "... I don’t know what to do. I just feel like I’m stuck in this situation where I don’t have an answer.”
And, Harris -- a well-respected voice within the Steelers' locker room -- questioned how the Steelers' offense could continue to function before things actually began to change.
"You can do one of two things. You can look at the record and say, OK, we’re still good right now, or you can look at the record and say if we keep playing this football how long is that s--- going to last," Harris said. "… I look at it like, how long is that s--- going to last?"
This was, in moment, the Steelers' answer to both questions.
The Steelers will have to begin a search for Canada's longterm replacement over the offseason, unless they feel Sullivan, Faulkner or Glenn Thomas are suited for the position. The Steelers are the second team in the NFL to fire their offensive coordinator in the middle of this season, as the Bills fired Ken Dorsey a week ago.
DK will have a full column later in the day, once more information's known.
DK and I went live on our DK Pittsburgh Sports YouTube channel Tuesday morning to discuss the move:
