It's only three games into the season and – as you may have heard - the 1-2 Steelers are already under fire, especially the underachieving and often overmatched offense. But if you're expecting coordinator Matt Canada to make many changes – much less drastic ones – that's not happening. At least not yet.
"We're going to stick with what we're doing," Canada insisted on Coordinator Thursday. "Obviously that's not the sexy answer but we believe we're on the right track. We've got to get some cohesion up front and we're working to get that."
"That's not an excuse," he continued. "We've got to produce right now. We have to continue to put our guys in a position to make plays and until we win, when we win, we're not doing that well enough."
"It's eleven men doing their job and when we're just, like, here, there and everywhere we're not getting it done," he went on before, as Mike Tomlin and Ben Roethlisberger had done earlier this week, pointing the thumb at himself. "I take that fully on me."
That's all well and good but what is not fully on Canada – and not really on him at all – how can he be held responsible for the individual mistakes that would sabotage even the best-calling? And those mistakes are happening, as Canada might put it, "here, there and everywhere," especially in the most recent loss to Cincinnati.
"You look at the first half, a lot of it was self-inflicted," Canada said shaking his head. "We made a lot of mistakes that we did to ourselves – the penalties, the missed opportunities early on."
On the Steelers' first three possessions, they committed four penalties that led to zero first downs. Even when they finally scored on an impressive 86-yard drive, they had to overcome a holding penalty by Kevin Dotson. It was one of two holding calls against Dotson that day, although one was declined. Each of the linemen was called for a penalty; Chase Claypool was flagged twice for offensive interference.
"We've gotta settle down and not do that to ourselves," Canada lamented, knowing that he was stating the obvious. "You can address it and we can talk about and we know it but (the players) are all professionals.
They understand they can't do that but there are very key plays that are frustrating for everybody because if you have a good gain that comes back with a penalty that's not good."
No, it's not, especially for an offense that struggles even where there are no penalties, whether it's not opening up holes, the running back misreading blocks, the quarterback missing open receivers or those receivers dropping passes when they are delivered accurately.
We believe we've got the players to do it. We don't feel like we've put our best foot forward," Canada said. "We have to execute, we've got to get cohesion, we've got to play as a unit, we have to not have the penalties and those mistakes. When we see all that happen we firmly believe we'll be doing what we want to do."
"We just have to finish," he concluded.
If the offense doesn't start finishing soon, the Steelers season will be finished before it's really begun.
