Blame Canada
Just last week, after the Bills fired Ken Dorsey, I was wondering when the last time was that a team fired a coordinator and it was an upgrade instead of a worrying sign of a looming problem. For the most part, a fired coordinator is usually the first step in trying to scapegoat problems when things are going badly for a franchise. The Bills are a good example. After losing Daboll the Bills simply haven’t looked the same. Dorsey wasn’t a great coordinator and you could argue maybe he deserved to go. But looking at the Bills as a whole it was hard to pin it all on Dorsey. The defense would bend at the worst moments. The game management was confusing, sloppy. The Bills feel like they are slowly rotting from the inside and Dorsey’s firing was possibly the beginning of the end. Time will tell on that one. But then, a week later, we have what I think will be a perfect example of a fired coordinator absolutely being an upgrade. Ask any Steelers fan and they would grind their teeth to dust whispering the same name. Matt Canada.
Congrats Yinzers, the bad man can’t hurt you anymore!
If you are a dork, Brett Kollman has a pretty good breakdown of why the Steelers offense sucked harder than your mom trying to siphon gas from an empty gas tank. If you aren’t a dork and are lazy like me, this tweet should put some general perspective on you. To summarize: Matt Canada is hairy balls, held tightly to a sweaty paunch in some crusty old tighty whiteys. This is your reminder to take a shower today if you have not yet done so. Personal hygiene is important.
Matt Canada becomes the first coordinator in Steelers history to get the boot midseason. Congrats! He should get a plaque in the mail in 3 weeks. Until Steelers fans complained about him I realized I didn’t know a damn thing about Mr Canada so I looked him up and…he ain’t nothing. This was his first NFL gig. Seemed like a guy who kinda failed upwards. Oh well, he’s gone now.
How this affects the Steelers should be interesting. It likely won’t have a big impact on the team the rest of this year as you can’t really institute a new offense this late, but it might! Who knows. The Steelers are an interesting team because they are the clearest fraud. They have a stifling defense but that offense was unwatchable, and they’ve won enough games by the skin of their teeth to hide it. A mediocre offense makes this a playoff team. The problem now is Kenny Pickett. Is Pickett good? I don’t think so. But under the right coaching, maybe he could reach Tommy DeVito vs the Commanders levels.
As this is Thanksgiving week, do not anticipate a comic on Friday. Have a great holiday if you are in the states, as for the rest of you, well have a good week anyway.
I want to point out how awful the situation got within Pittsburgh’s locker room, which definitely spurred this decision:
Diontae Johnson wanted to throw hands with one of the coaches during the Browns game, and Broderick Jones had to, according to reports, literally pick him up and carry him away before things escalate. While the identity of the coach in question hasn’t been revealed, its exceedingly obvious with context clues. (TBH I’m surprised you didn’t make that incident the comic)
Najee Harris, who is mostly known within our fanbase for his positive attitude, uncharacteristically told reporters post game that he was “tired of this shit” and generally calling out the lack of a game plan. Again, it was pretty obvious who he was calling out there
This admittingly was last season, but another story resurfaced where Chris Boswell, who for reference is our *kicker*, telling Canada to stop celebrating a win because the team won despite him, not because of him. To me, this is the wildest story because, like, if even the kicker is calling you shit openly to your face, I think I’d just quit out of embarrassment. There’s no coming back from that one.
(As an unrelated aside, Boswell is criminally underrated and if you take out his injury years he has a higher accuracy percentage than Tucker. Unironically my actual favorite player on the team; I sometimes get annoyed when we don’t go for three because of how consistent he is at even 50 yards FGs.)
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Overall this news made me incredibly happy. I agree wholeheartedly that whoever replaces Canada can not possibly be worse than him. That offense was historically bad. Of course it had to happen the week that Pickett also had his individual worst game of his career too, so our fanbase is kind of divided on where to go from here. After all, if Pickett just completed one of his throws on our last drive, just a single one, we could have iced the game from the field position we had. That was just inexcusable in itself. Still, I’m personally of the opinion that it’s too early to give up on Pickett, and we need to see how the rest of the season goes before we have that conversation for real. Genuinely think that the confidence boost from the firing is going to translate to better play from him, much like how the Raiders as a whole just look far better without McDaniels around.
Regardless, looking hopeful for our future at this point. I think the worst of this team is behind us now. Even if we don’t make the playoffs this year (I still think we do), the mere sign that we’re willing to break tradition to address exceedingly obvious problems to me indicates there’s an understanding that we need serious change to be contenders again, and that we’re willing to do it. Khan looks great as a GM in his admittingly short tenure, and Tomlin is still in the top echelon of coaches. It shouldn’t take long to find our footing again, as long as we actually take filling our new OC position next off season seriously and look outside the building.
The fire Canada chants at places other than Steelers games are one of the craziest things I’ve seen for a coordinator. Pat McAfee had a good video summary in a couple of minutes of a longer Matt Canada video.
I’m hopeful, but worried because Mike Sullivan is our QB coach, and the description of why he got fired from the bus as OC reads like or current offense. Predictable, doesn’t attack the middle.
There is a twinge of jealousy from those of us who root for teams who apparently don’t have the balls/brains to actually pull the trigger on these kinds of moves. We Packers fans have been calling for Joe Barry’s head for quite a while now, and for some completely unknown reason, he remains. Just throw it on the pile of stupid stupid decisions our FO has made over the past decade I guess.
Barry is no great coordinator, but we’ve had a top 10 pass defense each year he’s been here. This year, we’ve even got a top 10 scoring defense. Yeah, there’s more to it than raw counting stats, and the run D is bad, but his coordinating hasn’t been the trash fire people say it is. Barry is mid, as mid as it gets, but Packer fans are spoiled and think mid is the same thing as garbage.
I think Pickett will end up being ok or better for the Steelers. An underappreciated stat: He has only 4 interceptions on the season. This is a critical statistic for a quarterback.
Now, the cynical Steelers fan will point out that being unable to complete any passes, to his own team or to another, is really how we should judge him. But there have been analyses done on which statistics correlate the most to winning games, and “how many turnovers came from the QB” is one of the most important, only below “scoring defense”.
Here’s some neat trivia:
The last time the Steelers fired a coach mid-season was 1941. They had three different head coaches that year: Bert Bell, Aldo Donelli, and Walt Kiesling.
The Steelers have had THREE head coaches since 1970. THREE.
If the Giants and Titans are dumb enough to fire Daboll or Vrable, one of these teams on the cusp with mediocre coaching like the Chargers, Bills or Bengals will swoop in on them.
Especially if one were dumb enough to buy into the notion that rebuild ends in just one year. That said I wonder if there are still those who thinks Kayvon is a bust.
Kenny better hope he doesn’t fail out of the NFL. He can’t even transition to the CFL with those tiny hands of his. He wouldn’t be able to grip the ball.
Tomlin better hope the folks upstairs give up on Pickett soon before Pickett gets Tomlin fired too. A bad QB makes everything bad.