Well, they did it. The Steelers finally pulled the plug on their beleaguered offensive coordinator. The Matt Canada era is over, and throughout Steeler Nation, there is much rejoicing.

Now what?

That’s the question that will ultimately decide the effectiveness of this decision. While firing Canada was necessary based on the sad state of the offense — and perhaps more so by the mutiny occurring in the Steelers’ locker room — it does present the problem of reorganizing on the fly while the Steelers are in the thick of a playoff race. The plan is to have quarterbacks coach Mike Sullivan call the plays while running backs coach Eddie Faulkner takes on the broader role of coordinating the offense. Those two will have to work well together to make it happen. Canada was said to be an autocrat and to discard input from those around him. So, a little teamwork between Sullivan and Faulkner should be a good thing. But they will have to carve out a similar vision for the offense, and be willing to both listen and compromise when differences of opinion arise.

What might that vision look like? The Steelers don’t have the time to completely reorganize things. You won’t see them reinvent themselves in a few short days. But there are tweaks they can make that should help considerably. Pittsburgh has enough talent on the offensive side of the ball to be successful. They must use it more effectively, however, and they must rescue quarterback Kenny Pickett from regressing further. Here, then, is a plan that could save the offense from its current disheveled state, and give the Steelers a realistic shot at both qualifying for the playoffs and making some noise once they get there.

Create more opportunities for George Pickens

I have all the respect in the world for Diontae Johnson. He’s a professional receiver who runs great routes and has a knack for getting open. That’s why Pickett targets him so much. But Johnson is a possession receiver more adept at moving the chains than a weapon who can break games open with explosive plays.

That player is George Pickens. Under Canada, the Steelers largely squandered his play-making ability. Pickens’s route tree has been confined to sideline routes and 50/50 fade balls. While he’s shown he can be effective there, his production suffers from a lack of involvement in the broader scheme.

How can Sullivan and Faulkner get Pickens more involved? First, by allowing him to attack the middle of the field, particularly on post and dig routes. Critics of this strategy may argue the Steelers didn’t do this under Canada because Pickett was either unwilling or incapable of throwing there. This is somewhat true. But with so much emphasis on getting the ball out of Pickett’s hand quickly, targeting Pickens on in-breaking routes, which take longer to develop, was never a priority.

The Steelers can do so by using more play-action to displace linebackers, by using their tight ends up the seam to clear out safeties, by motioning Pickens — something they almost never do — to make it harder to pre-determine his route by formation, and by playing him in the slot more. None of these tactics require a re-making of the offense. They simply need to incorporate high-low reads for Pickett — a post by Pickens with a dig working underneath it, for example — that allow Pickett to focus on a single defender and throw off of his drop. It’s possible Canada had those concepts in his playbook, but they were rarely emphasized in the game plan.

The bottom line is this: for the Steelers to score more points, they have to get the ball more to their most explosive receiver. Pickens has 10 catches for 104 yards in his last four games combined. To use a popular phrase these days, that’s coaching malpractice. Sullivan and Faulkner must do better.

Get Jaylen Warren more touches

Warren has been the league’s most explosive back through the first 11 weeks of the season. The table below maps that out, and the results aren’t particularly close:

Checking in on RB efficiency (missed tackles vs. yards from scrimmage per touch) after Week 11

– Jaylen Warren is the most explosive RB in the league (barring a healthy De'Von Achane).

– Monty and Gibbs are both awesome and can coexist

– Ekeler looks slower, numbers confirm pic.twitter.com/ZuTyulnZEK

— Ryan Heath (@RyanJ_Heath) November 20, 2023

Warren averaged 14.3 yards per carry and 12.1 yards per touch against the Browns last week. Those numbers are bolstered by his 76-yard touchdown run. The fact he had a 76-yard run, though, speaks to his explosive potential. Why, then, despite those numbers, is Warren averaging just 11 touches per game this season? Warren’s counterpart in the backfield, Najee Harris, is averaging 15 touches per game. Based on performance, Warren should get as many touches as Harris, if not more. Whether or not this would rankle Harris remains to be seen, but so far, he’s said all the right things as far as splitting time with Warren is concerned.

One way to alleviate a potential problem is to play Warren and Harris together. The Steelers have not been very effective using their 12-personnel package this season, as Pat Freiermuth’s injuries, the slow development of Darnell Washington and Canada’s inability to carve out a consistent role for Connor Heyward has limited the productivity of the tight ends. An alternative could be more 21-personnel with Warren and Harris playing together. Warren has shown enough ability as a receiver to run the tight end route tree, so aligning him as an H-back and moving him around the formation seems feasible. Putting both players in the backfield beside Pickett is an attractive option as well. Pittsburgh has run the ball for more than 160 yards in each of the past three games, so emphasizing the run game is a smart way to proceed.

The Steelers need to get their best players on the field together. One way or another, that should involve Warren.

Fix Pickett

Pickett has clearly regressed the past few weeks, in terms of both production and his mental state. He seems less sure of his reads, has miscommunicated more frequently with his receivers and has become more skittish in the pocket. Fixing him, or at least getting him back to playing competent football, is a must.

How to do so? For starters, Sullivan and Faulkner can clean up the scheme. As Randy Mueller wrote for The Athletic:

“… don’t get mad at Pickett for the delay of games, the receivers’ routes not converting based on coverage, or the stupidity of a bubble screen to a motioned RB where the three receivers in front are all running routes and not blocking. It’s not Pickett’s fault that the Steelers would run a naked bootleg with no real option to target or that they would line up in an unbalanced (tackle over) line and run a sweep away from it without numbers to block it. This is the kind of stuff found in Cracker Jack boxes. This was only outdone by the unsound execution of the pass protection scheme. All things considered, it’s no wonder Pickett’s fundamentals have trended downward all season.”

Perfectly said. Canada was setting Pickett up for failure with his disjointed schemes. How often, while watching his offense, did you say to yourself, “what was that?” Beyond anything, the job of a coach is to put his players in positions to succeed. Canada did little of that with Pickett. From a preparation and play-calling standpoint, it couldn’t have been much worse for the young quarterback.

The most important relationship on a team is the one between its quarterback and offensive coordinator. Pickett and Sullivan are said to be on good terms, and Sullivan, as his position coach, is probably more aware of Pickett’s strengths and weaknesses than was Canada. Sullivan may also know what Pickett prefers to run and what to stay away from. Hopefully, Sullivan, Faulkner and Pickett will collaborate on the offense. Giving Pickett more ownership, which he didn’t have under Canada, is a good way to play to his strengths.

Pickett is not free from blame, of course. He developed some bad habits (locking his eyes on receivers, bailing too soon from clean pockets) and didn’t improve in areas where improvement was necessary (accuracy, coverage recognition). He reached a low point against the Browns, looking frustrated and confused from the outset. The change in coordinators will no doubt be a blessing for him. But Pickett has to step up as well. A fresh start means he needs to show improvement these next seven weeks. If he doesn’t, the Steelers will need to think seriously about shopping around this off-season for a replacement.

Layer the scheme

Finally, there’s the broader scheme to consider. Canada favored a multitude of formations and pre-snap movements in an effort to confuse defenses. That worked in college, but NFL coordinators sniffed it out. Often, the Steelers would align in a certain set only to run the same two or three plays from that set each game. When defenses remarked afterwards they had a pretty good feel for what the Steelers were doing — which was said more than once — they were alluding to the fact the Steelers were predictable by formation.

For example, two weeks ago against the Packers, they lined up in a wide bunch, motioned a receiver inside and had him block the backside backer on a zone run play. This worked for decent gains a few times. But Pittsburgh kept running it, and by the third quarter Green Bay knew what to expect and adjusted accordingly. Where were the constraint concepts off of that play? Why didn’t they line up in the wide bunch, motion down and then throw a play-action pass off of it? Or run a counter? Or a bootleg? This a concept known as layering, and it’s pretty elementary in the football world. You start with a base play from a particular set and then create alternatives that look like the base play but exploit how the defense reacts to it. It’s the philosophy behind some of the oldest systems in the book, like the Wing-T and the Veer. NFL teams don’t run those systems, but the best offenses still layer their plays. San Francisco, for example, runs inside zone, wide zone, zone read, bootleg, counter, reverse and RPO concepts all from the same formation using the same basic blocking scheme. They adjust the play-call to how the defense is reacting to whichever core play they choose to emphasize. We’ve seen the Steelers run all of these concepts, just not in sequence or in an effectively organized manner. Canada’s play-calling seemed to emanate less from a systematic approach than from a spin of a roulette wheel.

In the end, the Steelers did the right thing by moving on from him. Now, the challenge is to build a more functional offense that makes better use of its best players, helps Kenny Pickett improve and builds a more cohesive scheme. The ideas presented here aren’t the only ones that can accomplish these goals. But the Steelers would be wise to consider them as they chart their new course.