The Ringer NFL Show - The Play Sheet [VIDEO}: Why the Steelers Fired Matt Canada

Episode Date: November 22, 2023

The Ringer’s Ben Solak breaks down the 2023 Steelers' inept, predictable offense, to help understand why a change was needed at offensive coordinator in Pittsburgh. The rest of the team isn't off the hook, though, with Kenny Pickett missing reads and struggling to find chemistry with his receivers. Could the Steelers back up their winning record and make a playoff run, or will Canada's absence change little for their maligned offense? Watch 'The Play Sheet' on YouTube or Spotify every Wednesday at 8 a.m. PT. Producer: Cory McConnell Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Howdy? I'm Ben Solac. There's the play sheet. It's a weekly episode we do on Wednesdays where we break down some film. It's a video pod. So click on the Spotify app on your phone, watch the video and enjoy. The opening script, Matt Canada's been fired. The Steelers are six and four and also terrible. The fan base has been frustrated with offensive coordinator Matt Canada since the beginning of like last season and this year's been no different. In fact, the Matt Canada frustration has boiled over to the team where a kicker Chris Boswell was caught saying to Matt Canada after Canada celebrated a win. And then this past Sunday, when the Steelers lost to the Brown scoring only 10 points on offense, running back Najee Harris had some pretty pointed comments about the state of the team relative to their record. Meek was doing two things. You can look at the record and say, okay, we're still good right now. Look at the record and be like, if we keep playing this type of football, how long is that shit going to last? Right. I look at it, like, how long that shit going to last?

Now, the team's frustration with the poor offensive performance under Canada boiled over to the point where earlier on Tuesday this week, Matt Canada was fired midseason, which like even for as bad as the offense has been is shocking. The Steelers haven't fired a coach midseason since 1941, which was 82 years ago. That was World War II was going on. The fact that the Steelers fired a coach midseason when they never, ever, ever do this is a really important point because it emphasizes that it's not. not just about the offensive performance, not just about the fact that the offense wasn't working that well, but critically, it's about the fact that the locker room is being lost.

Players like Najee Harris are getting openly and clearly frustrated, vocally frustrated with the state of the offense. That, the cohesiveness of the locker room, is why Canada had to leave mid-season. Now, we can't go to play action to look at private team meetings and locker room conversations and all that internal frustration in Pittsburgh. We can go to play action to look at the Steelers' offense on film. what Canada was trying to do, why it wasn't working,

and what needs to change for the Steelers moving forward. So, let's go to action. All right, so Canada's entire offensive philosophy is around pre-snap motions and shifts. And anybody who's watched a lot of football knows this is a good thing, right? Like broadcasts highlighted all the time. It's a man's zone indicator for quarterbacks

and the Shanahan offense, the Mike McDaniel offense, they run out of tons of motions, gotta be good, right? Well, it's good when utilized. It's good when intentionally deployed achieve something. With Canada, it's just kind of spammed. And when it's spammed, it doesn't end up helping at all. Okay, so here's a first and 10 run. Steelers come out. They got a three receiver set over to the side of the formation, right? So, three receivers over here. Piggott gets under center, and then he kills the call, right? He can't the call. So they have two calls in the huddle,

and we're getting to the second call. At under center, we're going to send now Alan Robinson to motion, right? We always come with this jet motion. This is a ton of place for Canada. What the Steelers are running is basically they're going to run power, right? So you're going to get a double team here on the three tech work up to the linebacker. Titan's going to be here on this defensive end. Ideally, this defense ends out here, right? You block him here and then this is the alleyway that you hit. But it's not the case.

The defense vent is reduced. He's inside. So Titan's going to take the defensive end here, push him this way, double team working to this linebacker. And then Isaac Samalo is our polar. And he's going to come here for this corner, right? And we like this look. This is a good look for single back power.

But because we have this jet motion, we're now bringing this additional player, right? So what ends up happening is Robinson adds into the blocking scheme on power. Like imagine if there are a fullback right here in front of Aji Harris. You would go double team to this linebacker and you block here. And then the fullback would lead and Isaac Samuel would pull. And this now would be your alley, right? You would run behind these two pollers. Well, we don't have a fullback.

We have single back here. But we're going to bring Alan Robinson to motion. We're going to add him to the blocking scheme as the fullback. Right. When you run this, right, he now becomes a point of attack blocker. which you've now got to a play where Alan Robinson in jet motion is your primary point of attack blocker on a run. Like that's just bad process.

You don't want to end up there. It's not good to end up there. So this is where we end up. So when we run this, we go, okay, Darno Washington into the reduced defensive end. Here's our double team. But the problem is, Jeremiah Wusukoroamoa. Nobody can get up. This double team can't get up to the linebacker here because this reduced end just crashes

down on this. Here comes the safety running with the motion. Here's the corner on the outside. And so the Browns just have, they have three second level defenders for two blockers. And one of those blockers is a wide receiver. One of those blockers down Robinson. And so this gets met in the hole, right? This is not a successful, well-blocked run blocking play. Now she does a good job escaping JOK. And then he's big and he rumbles for a little bit. And it's a five-yard gain. But that, that process right there, that run, I don't think is good process. That's part one. So now later in the game, guess where we are?

We're under center on second and 10. We have a three receiver set over here, and then we're in single back, Naji Harris. Here's the tight end. Guess what Kenny Pickett's going to do a line of scrimmage. He's going to kill the call. Get to the second call. Guess who's going to come in jet motion?

Alan Robinson. It's the same play, right? And so Canada does this a lot. Canada will run the same play multiple times in a game. And that's fine. Other coordinators do that. They're usually more successful with the plays that they spam than the Steelers are. But okay, so you're spamming.

a play. This time, because the end is outside, right? We're going to get this kickout here from Darno-Washikoramoa. Here's our double team, right, working up to Jeremiah Wissu-Koramoa. We're going to pull Isaac Samalo, and Alan Robinson's going to be another lead blocker the point of attack, right? He's going to bring this player with him in jet motion, and he's going to be our first guy through the hole on power. So, all right, it's not the football. Well, double team loses again, right? I mean, the Browns know this is coming. And because double team loses again, we have Jeremiah Ousukoramoha, just running free into the gap, right and so we can fail he can hit on isa samalu and now it's the corner with a free look at

naji harris now in general we say if you can get your back one-on-one with a corner in the running game you'll like that matchup that's generally good process because the back's going to beat the corner however this corner starts the play inside about four yards off the ball right it's not like you're getting to him way outside on the boundary it's not you're getting to him where he's he's in in cloud support, he's coming from depth. He's already in the box. Like, he's already looking for this particular run. He's not at all threatened by Alan Robinson here working to the flat.

More on that later. And so he just, Denzel Ward just stays in the hole, stays in the hole. Jeremiah with Socoramoa slows Naji Harris down. This is messy. And then you get off the block from Darnell, Washington here, and it's a two-yard game. So we come back to the same play, and we're still working with Alan Robinson as a point of attack blocker. Jeremiah with Sukora Moa is not losing to this double team.

This is, this look is not working for us. So why do you call that? run twice and back to back when it's not even like design wise a great run in my opinion well it's because you want to get to a play action play right it's because you want to get to a play action look off of that run and presumably generate a chunk game right that's what play action is for fake the defense out run play action get a big game in the passing game especially when your dropback game isn't working so you go jet motion with all robinson right we're trying to sell so we're trying to sell the idea of okay here comes ilex sam molly with the pole and we're going to block with the tight end

here and then he's going to have him blocked and then we're going to go power it that's the idea we're trying to sell what do they actually do snap the football and robinson keeps moving on jet motion and runs to the flat right now in the previous runs what we saw is we saw this corner gregg newsome low right he was the player denzil ward i circled him last time that corner who was forced to tackle one-on-one with harris but he was in the box he was already present right he was previously here and what we want to do is we want him to think this block's coming so he steps down, he's worried about this, and then bang, we beat him to the flat quick, we throw this ball, we turn up a field. That's what we want. Pre-snap, when they send Robinson, look what

doesn't happen. The motion man doesn't come with him, right? Robinson's coming. The motion man's not coming. So this is not man coverage for the defense call. This is zone coverage. And so right now at this point, Pickett should understand I'm not going to get the same look here that I got on the previous two-place that I wanted to have. And so, When Robinson runs this to the flat, Newsom is not at all, not remotely fearful of a block here. He is not moving inside. He is not moving down the field. He is not in any way, shape, or form out leveraged on this route.

So you put your back to him, play action fake, but right here, like this is a open throw, but Newsom is in position to immediately make a tackle here. You did not get the look that you wanted to throw this. That's number one. Number two, play action is not worth it if you're going to throw a ball one year and past line of scrimmage. The point of play action is get down the field, right? Other offenses when they run play action run it to manipulate the middle of the field to pull these linebackers down and then throw to this intermediate area. There is no offense in the league who throws outside of the numbers more than the Steelers do.

But the Steelers also get, they run the ball more when they're under center than almost any team in the league. Like the only team that runs the ball more than the under center is the Eagles, which is because the Cubey sneak. Like the no team lines up like this as often as the Steelers do to run the ball. So when you finally call play action, they pass like 20% of their under center dropbacks. When you finally call it play action, why are you calling it to get here? Calling to get here! Do something, but make it explosive flight. So look, look, like you're trying to manipulate this corner to get to this route. That's what this play is designed to do, which, okay, big catch and run, nice, whatever.

Imagine if you were thinking about manipulating these linebackers, right? And this is a safety here, I understand, but functionally, he's a linebacker. You hand this ball off, a linebacker's got to step up. We got to be ready for the pollers. Here we go. And it turns out it's a play action fake, and you run this. The Niners run this a billion times. This is like, this is called strike.

It's called drift. This is the most popular thing in the world. Every offense runs this. Run this route. In fact, if we watch Darnell Washington here, who like kind of olay's, right? The safety thing's gonna be a block. He kinda slips him and works upfield.

Throw that. Throw that because if this corner overreacts to the flat here, which you can see like he's going to have to do, right when you land right here, way to beat, you're not under pressure, way to beat. Like obviously you have a free rush or coming, but you have a second. And if this corner gets low, throw this,

which I don't even love that. I love this. Run that. And you see like they do run in-break here to the top and there's a dropping defensive ends that muddies the read a little bit. But in general, if you, instead of doing a little switch release up here and then having Dante Johnson kind of jog this route out and George Pickens jog this route out, if you just put receiver right there and have Pickens run three, five steps and bang, hit him right here

and have him run for a touchdown. It's what every other offense in the league does. I don't understand how we're going to spend so many resources to run, have like a mid-running game from under center and when we finally go play action this is the best we're getting out of it that's infuriating dude in general this offense does a lot to set up a little right it sacrifices a ton with like the use of pre-knit motion and putting players in like positions that they're not going to be super successful in to then set up plays that don't actually have like a ton of of juice like there's not a lot of return on the investment that in itself is fundamentally flawed the other problem is when

you when you do all of that, you become extremely predictable because you only have like a few key changeups you're trying to get to, a few big moments, like a big, big, big symbol crash, huge crescendoes. And other than that, you're just in like textbook stuff. And we can find examples of that too. Third and four, third quarter, Steelers are going to run a concept called Hank. Everybody loves Hank. Nobody maybe likes Hank more than Matt Canada does. Hank is curl and a flat. It's an outside curl and a flat. And then we're going to get the middle sit on the inside here. from the tight end. Okay. And we got high low stretch, high low stretch. And then we have the ability to throw this if these linebackers widen out, right? So that'd be like a, we get to the middle

sit later in the down as we watch what those linebackers do. Now pre-snap, the brown's initially looking like they're too high. And then if you're watching, you see okay, like this, this safety's coming low. He's communicating with these corners out here. Looks like they might be giving us some sort of three, right? They might be giving us rotate a single high. We're going to get a single high safety. And then he could be bailing back. He can be bailing back, potentially cover three. and we like this running back route against this linebacker in cover three because the linebacker's going to be buzzing to the curl and then to the flat he's going to have to get through all this trash from these two players and so we potentially like the back here snap the football this is not single high this is going to be too high right this safety stays outside and then we're going to see this corner actually sinks and then it's going to be this corner to the flat and this corner hangs in the flat and this lineback is going right to the curl he's going to take away this outside route from the receiver and the corner's just sitting in the flat wait and for Nashi Harris, right? Like if you, if you watch how his body is positioned, he's connected to the receiver, but he's never taking away anything besides this flat route. So he's, the, the,

Brown said if you're going to run Hank all the time, we're just going to trap Hank to the back. Like, if you're going to run Hank constantly and throw it to the back, because Piggett loves to throw to the back. We're going to leave this corner in the flat, and we're going to be ready for that throw. Bang, fourth down. Now why, why was that so easy? Well, because here in week one, three by one set, back to the one receiver side, steal to snap the football. this is Hank curl curl flat flat middle sit we're just pick it go with the ball goes to the back all right week two against the cleveland browns this isn't exactly hank they're going to be in two by two they're going to move naji harris out right but we get still this swing pattern curl here curl here

it's the same functional spacing balls out to the back all right week four against the Texans not hank at all this time but still three by one back here to the single receiver side we're going to get here that traffic and congestion that we wanted to get as this linebacker goes to get connected to the back so all right stand the football there's our congestion there's our upfield release falls right out to the back you're going to keep doing this and doing this man they're going to know their need against their ravens three by one i don't even want to draw the concept for you i mean like they're going to get this stretch right here and and the three receiver aside they like blow eggs they get something that looks like this which i don't think is real like i don't even think this concept of fear is correct because they're badly coached. But what does Pickett want? I mean, just, it's just pickings up field. It's the back to the flat. This is third eight, right? And it's just immediately ball out line of scrimmage, make Jaylon Warren solve a problem for us. So if you're going to throw this constantly, they're going to get on it. Now, as we transition to talking about what has to like change for the Cilow's offense moving forward, I want to bring up just one more example of Matt Canada's

passing offense being not super well designed, but then show how it's not 100% on him. Second and five, we're going to motion out of the backfield, put him in a little like Titan's spot. The motion doesn't really tell us anything, motion, whatever. They're just getting him in a position to chip. He's going to chip and release to the flat. Titan here is going to release to the flat. What they're going to do is they're going to get this long vertical route here from George Piggins. Actually ends up breaking back to the sideline.

And then we're going to get deep crossers from these two receivers. When I say deep crossers, I mean deep crossers. The problem with the depth of these crossers, look at those boys fly down the field, is that pick it into the back of his dropback now, which I don't, like, maybe he, this is a three step drop. Maybe it should be five. Like, I don't know why it, with the depth of these routes, it feels like this should be a five step drop.

He should be stopping here. Because when he lands on his back foot, you should be ready to throw to your first read. And you can't throw either of these routes right now because they're just pulling coverage towards one another, right? This is not viable. So, okay, so pick it, maybe the drop back is wrong, whatever. Now we get to the point where he resets in the pocket.

You'd like to be able to throw Deonté Johnson right here. That's what you want. And there's a window to throw this ball. there is. Firstly, Higgins needs to be pulling this defensive back. He needs to be down the field design-wise. You want to get this guy out of the pictures. That's number one. Then you're worried about this linebacker right here. And you're also worried about this corner a little bit. The problem is that because Nashi-Harris chipped and then just released to the flat and we have just this tight end out here to the flat and because this other deep cross comes this way, nobody is tying down these zone defenders,

right? Watch just these linebackers. See how they can just freely drop and drop and drop and just get underneath this throwing window. If you want to open an intermediate window, remember we said, like, you should be trying to throw to the middle of the field. That's an important area of the field. You need to get Harris right here and turn him down and basically tell this linebacker, hey, if you keep sinking, I'm going to throw this for a six-yard gain, maybe an eight-yard game, maybe a first down. You have to punish him for sinking all the way and show him that you will throw this underneath such that he has to stay upfield and then you can throw this over the top to Deonton Johnson. Design-wise, you have to move these defenders.

and they just don't. And this route is a waste. It doesn't help. Like imagine, if we bring this thing all the way back, imagine if this route stopped right here. Right? If that's all he ran,

and then you ran this crosser, and then you ran him down the field. Just sit him right there. You would inherently pull this player forward. And how you can throw this, maybe even on a three-step drop. But design-wise, this isn't going to open a window

for you. You're not moving defenders in coverage. Now, here you're on the fourth quarter. All right. We're in the red zone for the first time today. It's a three point game. With everything, the Steelers offense has been all season and to this point. You can win the game right here, right? And McHan is probably keeping his job if they do. What concept do we have? Well, well, well. We're in a motion, Aji Harrison, do a chipping position out of empty. Guess what we're running, baby? I mean, it is the same concept. We're going to go chip to the flat, chip to the flat. This time from Pickens, it's going to be a post, which is important. And then we're going to get Deepcrosser and Deepcrosser. And Deonti Johnson is the one that I want. That's the player

I want to open on this concept. All right. Snap the football. This time it's not zone. It's man. Right. They're not zoned. They're manned. And we get a rush package. What that means is, firstly, we should not be looking at George Pickens right now. I have no idea why Pickett opens to this route. We have a post safety and man coverage inside leverage. Inside leverage. Post is not opening. Not any day of the week. Never on a Sunday, man.

I mean, I don't know why we're looking at it, but we are. If we're looking initially to this side of the field, here's the post, when we see it's not open, let your eyes fall off the post and get to the crosser. That's why you build the concept this way. I'm looking at the post. Why, I don't know, but we're looking at it. And then the crosser's going to come into my view from across the field. So just stay there.

But if we watch Pick it in the pocket, he brings his eyes back to the middle of the field looking at these two crossers which right now this is a mess to understand because of all the different bodies that are moving and accordingly when Deonti Johnson opens on a bust he's not there for it you should have your eyes the whole time

you should be if you're looking at this you should be then ready to throw Deonti Johnson into this window and he just skips it I have no idea why and what's frustrating is this time because of the blitz because of the man coverage immediately at the snap linebacker gets wide and there's nobody else middle of the field.

We should know right at the snap that this ball is going to Deonti Johnson. This ball is going to the crosser. It is the ideal crosser look. The first play, not a good crosser look because we're not moving the zone defenders. This is the crosser look. This is where you throw this.

Why are we looking at the post? And how are we possibly not getting to this route, man? He's running away from man coverage. This should be, even if they don't bust, this should be a potential catch at the sticks. We should be inside the 10. And so for everything that Canada is, design-wise and repeating the same plays and not understanding the intentionality of the motion and the play action, you still get to this point where you can actually win the game. And your quarterback just does not know how to read this concept out.

It's bad coaching, but it's also bad play by the quarterback. So if the Steelers are going to improve as they move on from Matt Canada and they kind of approach more of a platoon sort of offensive coordinator approach, I have no idea what's going on there. there's a lot of like easy fixes. The miscommunications between Pickett and Deonti Johnson, which were like all over the Browns film, that can be solved in one week. You just got to get the guys on the same page. The screen calls that like they're good at some screens

but they're really bad at others. You got to decide what you know how to block, what you don't and only call the good stuff. You got to cut the chaff away, right? So there is easy stuff to fix. There is, however, also just like issues with the quarterback. Pickett has just not been good this season. And you can blame his stunted development 100% on Canada.

you want. I don't think that's completely accurate, but you can. Just by removing the guy doesn't change the fact that the quarterback is here now. He's had this stunted development. He is this very uncertain, unsure passer who regularly makes the wrong reads and freaks out in the pocket. He doesn't have elite physical tools to cover for all of that. Even if you fix the off of the coordinator deal, Pickett still has a long way to go. He has a long hole to climb out of, and you're not going to just do that overnight. So is the Steelers offense going to like jump into the top five tomorrow just because they finally got rid of Canada. No. I think it's going to get better. I think it can get to league average because they have two above average wide receivers. They probably have

two above average running backs. They have a decent tight end room and an average offensive line. They have enough tally in place to be an average offense. And right now with the way their defense plays and the way they're coached, that should be enough to make the AFC playoffs. Long term, they need a solution for Kenny Pickett. They need a new offensive coordinator, a new offensive system that can really help out this young passer. That, 2024 problem. For 2023, This should help the Steelers' offense, should keep them in the AFC playoff race. And that'll do it for us on this episode of The Playsheet. Sorry, I got fired up.

I don't like bad offense. It drives me nuts. But thank you for watching. Thank you, Corey McConnell, for producing today's episode. Thanksgiving is this week. And so have a good one of those. Enjoy that. And subscribe to the shows.