The Pittsburgh Steelers have known offensive coordinator Randy Fichtner as quarterback coach since 2010. He started with wide receivers in 2007 then moved to quarterbacks. Many fans may not realize the Steelers have not had a coach that only works with quarterbacks since 2018. Recently, coaching journeyman Matt Canada was hired to fill that void for a full time quarterbacks coach.
Pittsburgh Steelers Hire Matt Canada as Quarterbacks Coach
Early Career
Matt Canada has been all over the country in coaching positions on the offensive side of the football. Still young in coaching years, Canada has helped turn several struggling collegiate offenses around in the last decade. Canada has most notably held positions at Northern Illinois, Wisconsin, North Carolina State, Louisiana State, Indiana, Pittsburgh, and Maryland where he had a short stint as interim head coach.
At Northern Illinois, Canada was the offensive coordinator in a victory for the Mid-Atlantic Conference Championship. While at North Carolina State University, Canada coached Indianapolis Colts quarterback Jacoby Brissett during his stint as offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach. Brissett had a great touchdown to interception ratio and lead the third ranked scoring offense in the ACC in 2015 under Canada. During a one-year stint at Pittsburgh, he produced fifth-round draft pick Nathan Peterman who also made huge strides in his draft stock with high touchdown to interception ratios. Canada and Peterman also lead Pitt to one of the biggest victories in program history over soon-to-be national champions, Clemson. Following his season at Pittsburgh, he was nominated for the Broyles Award, given to the best assistant coach in college football.
Future With the Pittsburgh Steelers
Matt Canada is young, innovative, adaptive, and hungry. These qualities will make for a solid assistant in an environment like the Rooney family has created. The Steelers do not fire coaches as freely or as often as organizations across the league. Canada has only been in college systems with high turnover rates and lack of stability at head coach. The Steelers are going to give him more than one year to implement his style of coaching. There is a lot of responsibility that comes along with being the Steelers offensive coordinator in today’s NFL. There is huge pressure for instant results. It is easy to assume that having a coach that solely devotes himself to quarterbacks would benefit this team.
Last season when star quarterback Ben Roethlisberger went down it became painfully obvious how much of a necessity a permanent position coach can be. It seemed a lot of fans expected Big Ben to be a kind of impromptu quarterback coach. Frankly, you just can’t expect that out of a player reeling from a terrible ligament tear in his throwing arm. Both young backups Mason Rudolph and Devlin Hodges showed early flashes of players that could lead this team into the postseason. However, after that short success both backups lacked the ability to adapt and stop making the same repeated mistakes. Turnovers became costly down the stretch for the Steelers. Turnovers are a statistic that declined during Matt Canada’s time at North Carolina State and Pittsburgh. If Canada can help lower turnovers and improve one of the worst scoring offenses in the NFL last year his potential is limitless.
