Steelers looking for 'outside hire' for desperately needed offensive coordinator upgrade

While I understand Mike Tomlin's sentiment in looking for an outside hire to be the next offensive coordinator of the Pittsburgh Steelers, this feels like a losing battle. Pittsburgh fired Matt Canada mid-season, and it took this long for them to have a plan in place to go about replacing him in the long term. Although they did make the AFC playoffs, everybody knew they would be one-and-done.

Where things stand right now, Tomlin does not feel that either Mike Sullivan or Eddie Faulkner have what it takes to be serious candidates to be his offensive coordinator. This is the same man who hired Canada, and we all knew how that was going to turn out before the ink dried on his Steelers contract... This is off-putting to everyone on the offensive staff in the building. Good luck retaining any of them.

And although I do get it from Tomlin's vantage point of starting over fresh at the helm of the offense, his new coordinator is not going to have the ingredients he needs to be successful. Best of luck making chicken salad out of chicken mess with Kenny Pickett slinging god knows what in the kitchen. Furthermore, the Steelers have not even begun the process of interviewing coordinator candidates...

Nobody enjoys living the 9-8 life more than Tomlin because doing so will keep him employed forever.

He either needs to find the next up-and-coming hotshot, or somehow catch lightning in a bottle here.

Mike Tomlin wants an outside hire to be the Pittsburgh Steelers' next OC

No, this is not a barren wasteland where offensive minds go to die. The most notable offensive coordinator to find success in Pittsburgh in recent years was former NFL head coach Bruce Arians. He will get Hall of Fame votes for his days leading the Arizona Cardinals and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, as well as being the greatest interim head coach ever with the 2012 Indianapolis Colts.

However, there is no Arians equivalent out there, a guy everybody has seemingly passed over time and time again for his opportunity. The closest approximation to that is former Washington Commanders offensive coordinator Eric Bieniemy, but even that is a stretch. Ideally, Tomlin will need to find the next Dave Canales, Ben Johnson or Bobby Slowik for this thing to really take off, alright.

Unfortunately, any offensive coordinator success will only be short-lived in Pittsburgh. This is because Tomlin is a defensive-minded head coach, and a well-entrenched one at that. He will get blamed if anything goes wrong with his new coordinator, while Canada's long-term successor will get infinite praise should he succeed. If he does his job well, other NFL teams will want to hire him pronto.

If this is a means for Tomlin to reset his operation, I get it, but it won't change their low-ceilinged ways.