PITTSBURGH —
Steelers head coach Mike Tomlin said that offensive coordinator Matt Canada was fired Tuesday, two days after another game of offensive struggles for the black and gold.
“I appreciate Matt’s hard work and dedication, and I wish him the best moving forward in his career,” Tomlin said in a post on the team’s X account.
Canada, who joined the team in 2020 as quarterbacks coach, became offensive coordinator the following year.
The OC position will be filled by two people, Tomlin said: quarterback coach Mike Sullivan and running back coach Eddie Faulkner. Faulkner will serve as the coordinator, with Sullivan — an offensive coordinator in Tampa Bay and with the New York Giants earlier in his career — serving as the play-caller.
At his weekly news conference Tuesday, Tomlin said Canada’s ouster was not an easy decision, but added the NFL is a “result oriented business.”
“The improvements were not rapid enough or consistent enough for us to proceed,” Tomlin said. “You’ve got to score touchdowns in this business, you’ve got to win games in this business. The totality of it has us where we are today.”
Pittsburgh hadn’t made an in-season coaching change at the coordinator level or higher since going through three head coaches in 1941.
Canada’s firing comes after the latest in a string of games in which the Steelers offense struggled to produce points. The Steelers fell to Cleveland 13-10 on Sunday.
Frustration outside the organization has been mounting for months. Fans chanted “Fire Canada” during a win over Cleveland on Sept. 18, a refrain that became ubiquitous throughout the region and meme-worthy on social media.
While Tomlin defended Canada for weeks, frustration inside the locker room may have reached a breaking point after the Steelers were held to 249 yards — including just 106 passing — against the Browns. Running back Najee Harris said in the aftermath that he was getting “tired of this (stuff),” with wide receiver Diontae Johnson saying simply, “you saw the game,” when asked what might be wrong.
Perhaps most damning for Canada is the way quarterback Kenny Pickett’s growth has stagnated. Drafted in the first round in 2022, Pickett put together a promising rookie season a year ago and showed flashes of being a difference-maker during the preseason this summer.
It all vanished once the games started to count. Pickett has just six touchdown passes — just two since the beginning of October — and his accuracy has dipped even after the Steelers moved Canada from the coach’s box to the sideline recently in an effort to facilitate better communication and flow.
The decision comes with the Steelers ready to start a stretch in their schedule where none of their next five opponents — Cincinnati (twice), New England, Arizona and Indianapolis — are currently over .500.
The Steelers have been outgained in all 10 games this season, including last week in Cleveland when the Browns started rookie Dorian Thompson-Robinson at quarterback.
Thompson-Robinson guided Cleveland to a late game-winning drive, a drive that came after Pickett threw three incompletions on Pittsburgh’s penultimate possession, none of them anywhere near their target.
While Tomlin said afterward the team does not second guess the decision-making during the game, less than 48 hours later, he went ahead and made a move that was likely inevitable but also surprising, if only because of the timing.
Pittsburgh has long been a model of stability and rarely makes a coaching move during the season. But with Pickett seeming to regress and options becoming increasingly limited, Tomlin decided there was only one big move left
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