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The most important thing for the Pittsburgh Steelers on Sunday is that they were 16-10 winners over the Cincinnati Bengals to improve to 7-4 while holding onto their position in the AFC playoff race.
The subplot to the win is that in their first game after firing former offensive coordinator Matt Canada they reached a milestone on offense that they never hit in his two-and-a-half year tenure.
That milestone would be the 400-yard mark in a single game.
Prior to Sunday the Steelers offense had gone 59 consecutive games – going all the way back to Week 2 of the 2020 season – without ever registering more than 400 yards in a game. They were the only team in the NFL unable to put up that total at least one time during that stretch.
That is a big reason why the Steelers made the decision to fire Canada on Tuesday. It is the first in-season coaching change of a head coach or coordinator for the Steelers since 1941. The fact they hit the 400-yard mark in the very first game after that decision is a pretty searing indictment of how poor of a job Canada did in running the Steelers offense.
They still did not score the number of points they would want to see, but it was very clear that their offensive approach had a different feel on Sunday. Quarterback Kenny Pickett looked confident and poised, putting together one of the best days of his career. He utilized the middle of the field, completed 24-of-33 passes for 278 yards and averaged 8.4 yards per pass attempt.
Over the first year-and-a-half of Pickett’s career the Steelers rarely seemed to use the middle of the field, with the overwhelming majority of their passes going out wide and within five yards of the line of scrimmage.
It was a very different story on Sunday as Pickett’s passing chart illustrates.
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