I don’t know if you know this, but Pittsburgh Steelers fans are down on Matt Canada — something about the offense he designs being in the basement of nearly every statistical category possible.
Steelers Nation has been out in full force vocalizing their displeasure at Acrisure Stadium, Penguins games and road games. Signs to fire Canada have been seen everywhere, including ESPN’s College Game Day. Some are even going so far as to suggest bringing back past coordinators like Todd Haley.
Gerry Dulac, Steelers beat writer for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, hosts a weekly chat where fans ask questions about the team. One frustrated fan posed, “Who do you expect realistically the Steelers to target in the off-season for their inevitable vacant OC job?”
“Way too early to speculate,” Dulac wrote. But he did anyway.
“But a good one would be a Tomlin friend — Jon Gruden.”
Tomlin and Gruden go way back to their days together with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. He was already on staff as defensive backs coach when Gruden was hired as head coach in 2002, the year they won a Super Bowl together.
It’s tough to say whether Gruden would accept a backup role, but other than a consultant for the New Orleans Saints in the offseason, teams aren’t exactly knocking down his door to join their staff.
The other question would be whether the Steelers would turn a blind eye to Gruden’s intent to “burn down the [NFL’s] house.”
Gruden resigned as head coach of the Las Vegas Raiders on October 11, 2021, following reports that emails he wrote over a 10-year period included racist, misogynistic and anti-gay language. He’s sued the NFL and Commissioner Roger Goodell, arguing that the emails were weaponized against him, in an effort to harm his contractual and business interests.
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