I’m going to have to disagree with Pittsburgh Steelers center Mason Cole.

Not with the meaning of what he said. Oh, he’s 100% accurate there. I’m just going to quibble with his turn of phrase.

While speaking with the media on Monday after his team’s 17-14 loss to the New England Patriots, Cole offered the following assessment of the offense.

“I don’t know what our identity is exactly right now,” Cole said. “We need to find it as a group, whatever that is. I think it’s huge for us to try to find the identity, and we have to make it that we have to find our identity. It’s not on the coach. It’s not on anyone else. It’s on us. And having that fight as a group to snap out of this.”

I think I know what the identity of the Steelers offense is. It’s Clark Kent.

It’s mild-mannered, chemistry teacher Walter White in “Breaking Bad.” It’s mealy-mouthed Verbal Kint in “The Usual Suspects.”

It’s an ordinary, bland, weak-kneed, anonymous, vanilla soft-serve, stodgy, milk-toast representation of an NFL offense.

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The problem is, I don’t see its potential to change into Superman in a phone booth. It’s not going to put on a black hat and turn into Heisenberg. It’s not going to stop limping and shuffling its feet and become Keyser Soze.

Not with this Bruce Banner quarterback. Not with this Peter Parker offensive coordinator. Not with a group of innocent Gremlins who have yet to be fed after midnight for an offensive line.

The defense might have that potential. At least when T.J. Watt comes back from injury. He can suddenly make them heroic, powerful, mean and supernatural again. Just like they were against Cincinnati.

Does Kenny Pickett do that if he’s inserted to replace Mitch Trubisky at quarterback? Well, that’s not happening on a short week before a Thursday night game in Cleveland with just one full day of practice. Forget that.

But does he become the Incredible Hulk and save the day for the rest of the offense all by himself in Week 4 against the New York Jets?

Maybe. But then what happens against the Buffalo Bills and Tampa Bay Buccaneers? If Pickett has a rough go of it against that kind of competition, do you go right back to Trubisky again?

Is offensive coordinator Matt Canada going to somehow be even more conservative with a rookie at the wheel than he is now with Trubisky under center? Is that possible?

I suppose to answer Cole’s challenge directly I’d use this word to define the identity of the Steelers offense: timid.

The coordinator is leery about putting his quarterback in a position to make mistakes, and the quarterback is scared to death to make them. Probably because the coordinator knows his job is disposable — as proven by the dismissals of Bruce Arians, Todd Haley and Randy Fichtner.

Trubisky is being ultra-conservative because he knows if he starts making too many mistakes, the first-round, fair-haired, golden boy from the college next door whose name the fans are already chanting in the stands is going to take the job all the sooner.

Trubisky knows this job is a rental position. That became clear the moment Pickett was selected with the No. 1 overall pick. He’s playing to rehab his resume from the end of his days in Chicago for another contract with a trade next year or in free agency in 2024.

A better deal isn’t going to come from the sidelines, though. He made out as well as could be expected already when the Steelers signed him after being Buffalo’s backup for a year. There’s no way Trubisky is going to go out and start winging the ball around and start taking chances that could put him back on the bench before 2022 is halfway over.

But he has to take at least a few more shots per game. And Canada needs to call some more plays where risks can be taken. Kinetic rookie wide receiver George Pickens has to be targeted more often, preferably downfield. After an electrifying training camp and preseason, Pickens had only one catch and three targets in both of the first two regular-season games.

Consider these numbers from former scout and current Steelers Network Radio host Matt Williamson.

Mitch Trubisky has attempted 71 passes in a Steelers uniform. Just 10 of those have traveled over 20 air yards and 15 of them have been at or behind the line of scrimmage.

— Matt Williamson (@WilliamsonNFL) September 19, 2022

Woof.

Then there is the issue of Trubisky’s mobility. Since he was acquired in free agency, we heard that Trubisky’s mobility (which clearly is legit) was going to be a perfect match for Canada’s offensive philosophy. But for all the rollouts and quarterback movement that we’ve seen, it doesn’t appear to have been with much of a purpose. Trubisky has only run four times for 16 yards.

Again, maybe Trubisky is paranoid that if he tucks and runs and gets hurt, he’s never going to get his job back once Pickett gets in there. For now, though, it just appears like he’s moving around a lot more than Ben Roethlisberger used to do, only to throw the same short passes that Roethlisberger was throwing his last two years with the team.

During his Monday press conference, coach Mike Tomlin said the team could get more out of Trubisky’s mobility, but he’s “not going to come in and install the triple option.”

You know what? Based on what I’ve seen so far from the Steelers offense, if I thought for a minute that Najee Harris was 100% healthy and that the line could block well enough to make that work, I’d fully endorse the idea. Could it be any worse than what we’ve seen so far?

“We haven’t scored enough points here the last couple of weeks,” Tomlin said. “But that’s the collective, not just the quarterback position and not just the players. All of us are responsible for ringing up the scoreboard.”

No one is asking any specific Steelers offensive player to put on a cape on behalf of his other 10 teammates on a weekly basis. It’d just be nice if someone showed the ability to allow that kind of identity to emerge from time to time.

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