Blowout Loss Had Better Teach the Steelers Some Lessons

The Steelers talked all week long about being not that impressed by how good the Pats were, and how they were going to be able to show them how they could play with them.  They were right.  For one half anyway.  Playing the best team in the league, bar none, the Steelers crumbled in the second half, unable to stop the Pats at all as they fell at 34-13 in Foxboro.  The team fell to 9-4, still a game ahead of the Browns in the North.  They also were unable to secure a playoff birth, through that will likely happen sometime in the next two weeks.

Not to say that the loss to the Pats is not alarming in a lot of areas.  One thing it pointed out clearly is that this team has not arrived.  It was was frustrating to see time after time the stupid, and I mean stupid, knockout hits and trash talking that both Anthony Smith and Tyrone Carter tried to do all day against a Pats wide out core that owned them.  For Smith, this had better be a lesson to keep your mouth shut – for good.  He claimed his quotes guaranteeing a win during the week were taken out of context.  Uh, sure sounds pretty cut and dry to me.

Then there’s Carter, who can’t make a play, but yet when he comes up with a tackle he insists on telling the guy he tackled how good he is.  This is not the way the Steelers play football.  They should let their play do the talking, not using their mouths.  While it seemed the team was in the game as they trailed 17-13 at the half, they made no adjustments at the break, and played terrible in the second half.

Bottom line, Tom Brady did whatever he wanted.  He threw the ball play after play, and by the time it was said and done, he had thrown the ball 46 times to just 9 rushes.  He threw for 399 yards and four touchdowns, and just about every play the Steelers seemed to have someone ready to get to Brady, but the corners couldn’t cover anyone.  Randy Moss, Jabar Gaffney, and Wes Welker combined for 23 catches for 335 yards and four scores.  It was a day the defense had better forget.

So they didn’t pass the test.  It was not entirely unexpected, as the team put itself behind the 8-ball with their stupid choice of comments during the week.  Let’s just hope that they will learn from their mistakes, and maybe, just maybe, like in 2005 with the Colts, there will be another shot to play the Pats down the road.