First off, i give no credit to the Pats. After this game, i am in no way scared or impressed with this mediocre team. Their defense is **** and the biggest success their offense had was steeler blown coverages.
They have 1 weapon, gronk. Gronk may be the NFL MVP. If Gronk gets hurt, the pats are screwed.
All the blown coverages, missed tackles, stupid penalties, 2 missed FGs and the steelers were still in this game until very late.
DeAngelo and DHB were making big plays. Imagine what Bell and Martavis would have done. At full strength, the steelers would have won that game easy.
This looked like preseason game #6. I get it that most teams don't play starters in the last preseason game but when your starting defense barely played any snaps together, you should have played them at least a quarter to work that out.
Why did they trade for Boykin to not play him? It sure isn't because Blake is so great. How badly must Boykin be in practice to not start in this secondary?
Not playing Coates was a mistake. Coates has no idea what he is doing, but he's real good at running fly patterns and getting jump balls. They could have used that against the pats.
Steelers changed holders on the FG after 2 misses. Maybe the holder was to blame for the misses. Didn't he see Ace Ventura?
Must be coincidence that the steeler defense started having communication issues as soo as there were problems with the radios.
Matt Spaeth could have scored on those 2 plays Gronk did. One he was uncovered and the second they let him run free.
WFT was Blake doing on the first Gronk TD where he was uncovered. Golden at least tries to make a play while Blake stands there and watches. If Blake gets in on the tackle, Gronk is probably knocked out of bounds at least.
Clock management is still a joke.
Tomlin wastes a TO because he wants a look at the DHB endzone play when it was obvious on first look that he was clearly out. I saw he was out live.
You end up both hurrying up and then somehow laeving a TO on the board at the half. Takes talent to engineer that scenario.
You are down 2 scores and you held all 3 TO until 1:17 left in the game. At that point, calling a TO is stupid. You should spkie the ball on 1st down because as soon as you are under 2 minutes, if you don't have 3 TO then you need an onside kick.
Then once you did break the seal on the 3 TO then why the hell aren't you calling them? They kept letting the clock bleed play after play.
Edelman looks like the captian of a Hitler youth squad.
Looked like Ben had Speath wide open on the goaline play fake that he threw away.
Haley made some horrible calls in the redzone.
Note to all NFL teams. When you get to the redzone vs the steelers, don't bother running. Just split out 2 TEs to the same side and the steelers will cover them with their 2 slowest LBs for an easy mismatch.
How do you not have that fixed after the last time? Maybe the Steeler offense should use that same play. Then Butler can see how to defend it.
Ben's INT was more on DHB. If he comes back to the ball, it's a pass interference call or he at least breaks up the INT.
Wheaton showing that he will always just be a #2 or 3. He's OK but not a playmaker.
Now for a few thoughts that may seem crazy.
1. I think the turning point of this game was the botched reverse pass by Antonio. They were moving the ball easily. Pats were on their heels and a TD seemed likely as the pats looked confused. Then they throw in that stupid play and it derails the drive. Then they miss the FG and it lifted the pats. It would have been a different game if the Steelers scored a TD on that drive.
2. I feel better about the defense after this game. Sounds crazy but they did a lot of good things. SHazier looks like he will be a star. Dupree made some plays. They did have some pass rush but Brady gets rid of it so fast.
The problem was just all the mistakes. Mistakes that can be fixed. I'm not saying this will be a great defense but they made Brady work for it aside from the blown coverages. I see signs that this defense can be at least middle of the pack and if you couple that with the steeler offense, that is enough to go a long way this year.