Pittsburgh Steelers insider Gerry Dulac from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette joined the Vinny & Haynie Show on 105.7 The Fan Monday afternoon to talk about the quarterback battle in Pittsburgh, but the conversation took a turn when Dulac turned his attention to Matt Canada and his relationship with the offensive personnel from 2021. They asked Dulac about how much better the offense could be in 2022 with a more mobile quarterback.
“Well, we better be expansive, because what we saw last year, especially the last eight games were really downright dreadful. When the only reason, I don’t want to say the only reason, but if you look back they won nine games and seven of those were in the fourth quarter or overtime with game-winning drives by Ben Roethlisberger, who at that point and time said 'you know what we are just gonna run the hurry up the way I know how to run the hurry up and we are going to try to win this game'.”
Photo credit via Twitter: @JSKO_PHOTO
Dulac makes an especially salient point here. Roethlisberger and Najee Harris did not get a lot of help from Canada with so many RPO’s with the aging quarterback at the helm. He was no threat to run, and Roethlisberger seemingly always chose the pass option earlier in the game. Canada did virtually nothing to tailor his offense to the skillset he possessed, and it seems that Dulac believes that the best offensive moments in 2021 were when Roethlisberger was drawing it up in the dirt. Of course, you could say that about the last five years of his career, and it would be just as accurate. No modern quarterback improvised more than the Pittsburgh signal-caller. Dulac continued:
"Otherwise, what we saw offensively was there was a lack of flow, continuity, disjointed, coaches were upset, players were upset with formations that were being called that were out of sync with everything else that was going on, and it was, you know it was somewhat chaotic. So, to me that is the biggest thing that has to change. They can bring in different quarterbacks, new offensive linemen, new offensive line coach, but if it is not orchestrated better from the top, then they're going to have some more problems."
The Steelers were uncoordinated many times in 2021 on offense and Harris often had to run out of shotgun formations that were easier for opposing linebackers to diagnose. Some of Harris’ best work was just getting back to the line of scrimmage. Again, it is important to point out in the RPO game that if your quarterback is not a legitimate threat to run, it becomes easier as the season goes on to read the play and sit on the 3-yard slant routes. Roethlisberger made a living on the short passes in 2020, but once the defenses started figuring it out, it stopped working. That is not solely on Canada, but once defenses began keying on the RPO the way Roethlisberger ran it, he could have introduced play-action wrinkles and thrown the ball deep which was on Canada. Dulac summed up his thoughts on Canada:
"I mean Mike Tomlin gave Matt Canada the vote of confidence after the season, but by curiously saying we expected to take a step backward. Really? I thought who fires, what team fires an offensive coordinator and brings in a new one and expects to take a step backwards. Don’t you fire a coordinator with the idea that you want to take a step forward?"
Tomlin's support of Canada’s struggles is odd. If he had that much faith in Canada’s system, why wouldn’t he impress on him that the aging quarterback cannot run it and find a middle ground. Talented coordinators tailor the offense to the player’s strengths they have. The successful ones do not just run the system stubbornly whether it works or not. The Steelers went out and got Mitch Trubisky and Kenny Pickett who are more mobile and a threat to run, but they do not have the championship pedigree yet of Roethlisberger. It is more popular to bash the old man for what he could not do, rather than recognize what he did do and I for one was glad to hear Dulac pointing that out.
What do you think, Steeler Nation? Do you have faith in Canada’s offense, or are you going to miss Roethlisberger at the end of games? Please comment below or on my Twitter @thebubbasq.
