PITTSBURGH — Pat Freiermuth was once booed as a Brooks School high school basketball player in North Andover, Mass. He really never gave it much thought because it was the opposing fans doing the booing.

It is commonplace for that to happen. What wasn’t commonplace for him occurred a few months later as a freshman tight end at Penn State. That’s when he got his welcome-to-the-fanatic-fan moment.

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Trailing Appalachian State late in the 2018 opener, the 105,000 fans at Beaver Stadium let the Nittany Lions hear it with a loud round of boos.

“I was like, ‘Damn, this is serious,'” Freiermuth said. “They expected a lot from us and we weren’t giving it to them, and they let us know it.”

Penn State won the game in overtime and went on to average nearly 60 points per game over their next three. All was well in Happy Valley, but it opened Freiermuth’s eyes.

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Mason Rudolph has a similar story from early in his collegiate days.

Oklahoma State had some “offensive issues” early in the 2015 season, and the fans let it be known they weren’t happy and it was unacceptable behavior.

“I was like, ‘Wow,'” Rudolph said. “I kind of realized then what was expected. It was a good lesson. It put things into perspective.”

Professional athletes learn at an early age that booing is part of the game. They may not agree with it, but most, if not all, realize that publicly criticizing a passionate fan base for caring isn’t the best way to go about it, so they say the right thing … typically.

That’s especially true in Pittsburgh, where the topic of booing has been front and center across the hall with the University of Pittsburgh football team for the better part of a week and now has made its way to, of all places, the Steelers coaching booth and offensive coordinator Matt Canada.

Pitt starting quarterback Phil Jurkovec criticized fans for booing him during an unexpected loss to the Cincinnati Bearcats. Head coach Pat Narduzzi doubled down a few days later by referring to Pittsburgh as “Boo City, Pa.”

I asked Pat Narduzzi if he was concerned about Jurkovec’s psyche against North Carolina this week after having two rough games and being booed against Cincinnati.

His full response. (The “Boo City” remark is from 0:24-0:29.)

— Amanda Godsey (@AmandaFGodsey) September 18, 2023

In a way, Narduzzi wasn’t wrong. Pittsburgh loves to boo.

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Passionate Penguins fans routinely chanted to fire general manager Ron Hextall last season. He was let go after the season and said: “Criticism is part of the business. You have to deal with it.”

It bled over to the Steelers on Monday night — in a game they beat the rival Cleveland Browns 26-22.

“I have learned to embrace it because if fans expect a lot from us, then why can’t we expect a lot from us, as well?” Freiermuth said.

Gunner Olszewski was booed for fair-catching a kickoff out of bounds; the offense was booed for not moving the ball again; and the focal point of much of the negativity, Canada, endured a chant of “Fire Canada” after a failed third-down play late in the game.

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“Every place I have been I have heard it when the offense struggles,” center Mason Cole said. “When you are in the game, players are so focused that you don’t know. You know how passionate fans are that they want you to be good. It is not like we are trying to be bad. We aren’t trying to not execute.”

Coach Mike Tomlin said: “Our job is to win and thus entertain them, and so we don’t begrudge them for that. We want them to be fat and sassy and spoiled. It is our job.”

Canada had a chance to address the chants that rang through Acrisure Stadium and into the press box, mere feet away from the coach’s box and Canada’s work area on game days.

Canada sidestepped the obvious of being the ire of many Steelers fans based on two games and three years’ worth of perceived ineptitude.

Matt Canada on the “Fire Canada” chants from MNF game.

— Mark Kaboly (@MarkKaboly) September 21, 2023

“I’ve been made aware of it. Obviously, I was working,” Canada said. “The fans want us to win. They want us to play better. There’s nothing wrong with their passion and those things, and obviously we’re not — Mike T. says it all the time — we’re not running away from it. We expect to be better. We’re going to be better. I firmly believe that. Until we do that, obviously there is going to be frustration. I’m in charge of the offense. It wasn’t good. That’s it. It’s part of the deal. It’s part of the chair.”

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Steelers fans have always been critical of players dating back to the 1970s. Offensive coordinators are right up there next to quarterbacks as the biggest targets. The Steelers have had 12 OCs in their history, and the only one never really being criticized was Ken Whisenhunt, who had a .710 winning percentage and a 5-1 playoff record from 2004 to 2006.

Canada is 19-16-1 in his two-plus years and has an offense that has scored 30 or more points twice. The last time the Steelers scored more than 40 was Nov. 8, 2018, when they put up 52 against the Carolina Panthers with Randy Fichtner leading the offense.

“We expect to be better. We’re going to be better. I firmly believe that,” Canada said. “Until we do that, obviously there’s going to be frustration. Most frustration is with our guys because we’re not happy with what we’re putting on tape and what we’re putting on the field. We’ll continue to work. We’ll get it right. We’ll get better. I firmly believe that.”

It would be hard to get worse.

The Steelers have gone three-and-out 12 times in 25 drives through two games. The offense has the same number of touchdowns as its defense (two) and is averaging a league-worst 9.5 points per game.

The offense is second last in yards per game and rushing yards per game. The Steelers didn’t have one snap against the Browns in the red zone, and 38 of their 55 rushing yards came on two plays.

And you wonder why “Fire Canada” trends every week on social media.

It wasn’t just a few people chiming in on Matt Canada, in case you were wondering.

— Josh Yohe (@JoshYohe_PGH) September 19, 2023

“We love passionate fans, that’s what makes the game so great,” Rudolph said. “We had a lot of passionate fans there on Monday night, and you get that in college, too, and you experience the same thing throughout different levels. People have that right. They are invested. They care. I’d be lying if I said I liked it, but hey, if I wasn’t playing I’d probably be up there booing, too.”

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No doubt Jurkovec will get booed Saturday night against North Carolina, and with more than 35,000 Steelers fans expected to make the four-hour flight to Las Vegas, fans booing on the road is a possibility.

“People don’t like paying good money for bad football,” Cole said.

Players deal with booing all the time. They are pretty much immune from it by the time they get to the NFL.

Definitely, they won’t add fuel to the fire by criticizing the fan base for caring like what’s happening at Pitt, which hasn’t gone unnoticed a few feet over in the Steelers’ part of the UPMC Rooney Sports Complex.

Steelers defensive coordinator Teryl Austin has been coaching in the NFL for 20 of the last 21 seasons and has never encountered a player complaining to him about fans booing.

“It is part of doing business,” Austin said. “I don’t think I ever had a player come up to me and say, ‘Hey, they are booing me.’ I would be, ‘Well, it’s kind of part of the deal.’ You put on the shoes, you put on the jersey and you go out there and represent the city and the team and you take all that comes with it, the good and the bad.”

Every city boos its home team at some point. Whether it is over a bad play, a series of bad plays or even a lackluster effort, fans are going to let players know they aren’t happy with what they are seeing.

Now, there is a big difference between booing a team or individual performance and booing an individual coach (which is hard to discern), but regardless, Steelers fans have had no problem making their feelings known.

“We understand where the passion comes from,” said receiver Allen Robinson, who is in his first year with the Steelers. “We have a great fan base. They have high expectations, and we have high expectations for ourselves. We understand that in some cases what we do is unacceptable. You understand why it is happening and things like that.”

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(Photo: Joe Sargent / Getty Images)

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