The Steelers finished 26th in points scored last season, so there wasn’t much mystery about where the team needed to improve heading into the 2023 campaign.
Friday night’s preseason opener against the Buccaneers offered some hope that they’ve taken the right steps. Quarterback Kenny Pickett punctuated an 83-yard opening drive with a 33-yard touchdown pass to George Pickens and the quick way the Steelers moved down the field provided a hopeful note for the Steelers first team in their only action of the evening.
On Sunday, offensive coordinator Matt Canada said that the offense “got done what we wanted to get done” without reading too much into what the results of one drive mean for the team’s growth over the offseason.
“With that small sample size of what we had with that whole group and Kenny, we achieved what we wanted to do,” Canada said, via Mark Kaboly of TheAthletic.com. “There was nothing we did Friday night that we didn’t do last year. Execution is what we are trying to get. We had a plan of what we wanted to do and how many chances we had if we could. We were trying to do that within the framework because we didn’t know how many opportunities we were going to get . . . we weren’t just going force on and do something silly.”
The Steelers were 6-2 to close out last season and the move to Pickett at quarterback clearly pushed the offense in the right direction in the second half of the year. A repeat of 2022 won’t make anyone in Pittsburgh happy, however, and their preseason opener provided reason to think that things have progressed regardless of how Canada couches the team’s play.
