PITTSBURGH – Tom Brady had a keen sense of what you may be thinking as he tried to explain what all went wrong on Sunday at Heinz Field. It was just a mess of a loss for the Patriots, who suddenly have the look of some basic, ordinary NFL team in trouble rather a perennial contender.
“All of us feel it,” Brady said after the 17-10 setback against the Steelers. “It’s not any one thing, and it’s a lot of things collectively. We have always won as a team, and we lose as a team.
“We’re not going to make any excuses. We just have to do a better job.”
New England (9-5), which might have cost itself a first-round bye in the AFC playoffs with the loss, has certainly had its share of similar rough patches and assorted adversities throughout these dynasty decades. Yet typically Bill Belichick’s teams manage to show up in January with a chance to contend for a Super Bowl. But the latest performance, a week after a last-minute meltdown in Miami, was so far off the scale of what’s typical for Belichick’s crew, especially at this time of year. Let’s count some ways:
• The last-minute magic was missing. And Brady’s three incompletions to the end zone that settled the game marked the second fourth-quarter drive in which New England came up with zero points.
• The run defense was horrific. That was Jaylen Samuels – not Le’Veon Bell or even James Conner – who shredded New England for 142 rushing yards. Samuels, a fifth-round rookie, had never rushed for 100 yards, not even in high school. Nor had he ever carried 19 times in a game until Sunday.
• Rob Gronkowski was a shell of himself. That’s been a theme all season, but he’s been a card-carrying Steelers killer for years. He didn’t catch a pass on Sunday until the fourth quarter, but it wasn’t a matter of him merely being smothered by Pittsburgh’s coverage. It appeared that for much of the game, the Patriots kept Gronkowski out of patterns and instead relied on him more as a pass protector. In the end: two catches, 21 yards.
• The penalties. Nothing blares “sloppy” like 14 penalties for 106 yards.
• The drops. At least four of Brady’s passes were breadbasket throws muffed by the receivers.
• The misfires. Brady wasn’t as sharp as usual, sometimes affected by the Steelers’ rush and in other cases just plain off. Or a combination of both factors. On the fourth-quarter red zone pick snagged by Joe Haden at the sideline, Brady insists he was trying to throw the football away. And none of the last four throws to the end zone came close to connecting for six.
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