UPDATE (3:18 p.m.): Steelers spokesman Burt Lauten confirms Canada will remain on the team as the team’s offensive coordinator.
Matt Canada is returning as the Steelers’ offensive coordinator, confirmed team spokesman Burt Lauten.
— Brooke Pryor (@bepryor) January 18, 2023
Our original story is below.
We recently wrote about Gerry Dulac’s mailbag response suggesting the team was keeping OC Matt Canada in place. It ended with Dulac leaving a hanging “Indeed…” that wasn’t followed up.
Now Dulac has gone into more detail. According to his latest article for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, he reports that Canada will be the Steelers’ offensive coordinator in 2023.
“The Steelers have no plans to replace offensive coordinator Matt Canada and he is expected to return to Mike Tomlin’s coaching staff in 2023, sources told the Post-Gazette.
Despite a public outcry to fire him and numerous rumors about his coaching status, Canada is set to return as offensive coordinator for his third season — something that seems never really been in doubt after the offensive continued to show signs of improvement towards the end of the season. ”
As Dulac notes, this apparently wasn’t a difficult decision for Mike Tomlin and the Steelers. Pittsburgh’s offense improved as the team finished the stretch 7-2, though they still finished 26th in points per game.
Though many fans want Canada fired, he will return next season in his third season as the team’s OC. His contract runs until 2023 and his job will be reevaluated after the year. The Steelers have a long history of not firing coaches. Instead, they simply choose not to renew contracts. The last time the team fired a coordinator was in 2003, when DC Tim Lewis was fired at the end of the year for having a different philosophy than head coach Bill Cowher.
Canada was hired as the team’s quarterbacks coach in 2020 after dropping one in 2019. He was promoted to offensive coordinator in 2021 to replace the outgoing Randy Fichtner, a longtime friend of Mike Tomlin and one of his first hires in 2007. Pittsburgh finished only 21st in points per game in 2021, falling to 26th in 2022 return. But the offensive found an identity through their running game and played better ball control while making fewer mistakes in the second half of the season.
A report Tuesday suggested Tomlin had yet to make any final coaching decisions. But it sounds like either Tomlin had or now has. Canada will run the show for at least another year, though the Steelers’ offense needs to produce more than it has in the past two years.
Since not much turnover is expected from a young offensive, the Steelers are clearly counting on continuity, both in terms of players and coaching staff. There don’t seem to be any sweeping changes in the coaching staff. Perhaps the only thing that will look different next year is the potential loss of Brian Flores, who has been interviewed or asked to be interviewed by three teams so far this offseason. One change Dulac notes is the loss of assistant Blaine Stewart, who is going to West Virginia where his late father, Bill Stewart, once coached.
develop story.