Week 1: New England Patriots (SNF)

[Edman]

Season Opener against the team we all love so much.

Never beaten Brady in Gillette Stadium (0-4 All Time), and they'll be dropping another championship banner.

Early test not only for the Defense, but the team as a whole. If things truly are different regarding the Steelers' team culture in 2019, this is good stepping stone to prove it. In the bright lights against their longtime nemesis. No more Gronk for the Pats, but they still have Brady, who has been money against the Steelers.

30-17 Patriots final.

[polamalubeast]

0-5 in fact and over 35 PPG for the Patriots in his games

I always want to win and I never want to have a moral victory, since it's a loser mentality, but I want at least the steelers to be competitive in this game.

If the Steelers are not competitive in this game, it will of course not be the end of the world, but I would be very disappointed.

[AtlantaDan]

Some bad memories with each of those games

2002 - the Pats show the way to exploit what had been a very good Steelers defense was to just throw the ball repeatedly (as Cincy had done late in the 2001 season) while another bad Kordell performance is the start of him losing the starting QB job for good within a month
http://old.post-gazette.com/steelers...eele0910p2.asp

2007 - the Anthony Smith guaranteed win debacle
https://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/10/s...ll/10pats.html

2013 - the game in which I finally conceded Troy could no longer play pass defense
https://www.si.com/nfl/audibles/2013...gland-patriots

2015 - the debut of the lets not cover Gronk defensive strategy
https://www.pennlive.com/steelers/20...ronkowski.html

2017 - Steelers inability to play man coverage requires staying in zone, which Brady shreds
https://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/...e-man-coverage

[polamalubeast]

2002 - the Pats show the way to exploit what had been a very good Steelers defense was to just throw the ball repeatedly (as Cincy had done late in the 2001 season) while another bad Kordell performance is the start of him losing the starting QB job for good within a month
http://old.post-gazette.com/steelers...eele0910p2.asp

What's crazy is that in the game after, the Steelers played against Gannon and the Raiders and they pushed it to another level!

70 pass attempts, if we include the sacks! ... And it's even if the Raiders had the lead for almost the entire game!

They still had the ball for almost 40 minutes in this game.

https://www.pro-football-reference.c...0209150pit.htm

[hawaiiansteeler]

[cubanstogie]

I am pretty confident Steelers get it done. Faster D with improved safety play, not to mention no Gronk and I think they come out with victory. I’m hoping this is the year Brady shows his age and loses velocity. If D can nullify rb’s out of backfield on pass plays they have excellent chance. On offense I can’t see as many big plays this year but think Ben will protect ball better and still put up good numbers. Vance is going to be big this year

[Mojouw]

I figure they lose this one but I'd rather beat them in the playoffs.

[hawaiiansteeler]

[Craic]

I think what we forget, however, is the Steelers won against them last year. The year before that in the regular season, we had one (Edit: won) the game but got the TD called back. In the playoffs we lost Bell very early, so that's an injury situation to our workhorse RB for that year. A couple years before that we had the Scobee FG fiasco. So, to be honest, we were a good FG kicker and a single call away from being 5-4 against the Patriots since 2008.

[tube517]

That 2015 game was the Scobee disaster but also DHB had an easy TD but his foot was out of bounds and he was WIDE open. ALong with the early trick play that Haley called and the terrible defensive non communication disaster.

Should have won that game but they weren't good enough

[hawaiiansteeler]

[86WARD]

Patriots 30 - Steelers 20.

[polamalubeast]

Our defense was our biggest problem in foxboro in his games ... 2015, the pats had 4 easy TD in their first 6 drives before to run the ball with the rain ... No one was on Gronk on some play, it was a fiasco.

For 2016, even if all our offense had been on the field and healthy, it would not matter, the Pats have made just a single punt in this game (first quarter) the rest of the games it was either FG or TD for the Pats

So even if the Steelers made some bad play early in this game, no reason not to be competitive in this game

[Dissolv]

I actually always blame the offense in these situations. Very few teams can hold the Pats down, and our D is just a bad matchup in general. But the Offense if routinely held by the Patriots to 17, 21 type scores. Since that has been where our big names and big draft picks have been, I always wonder why our strength isn't more competitive in a shoot out? Where are the 35 and 42 point games when we need them? Expecting our style of defense, which is very zone heavy, to work against an offense designed to exploit it just doesn't seem like a reasonable expectation. Expecting Ben, Bell, and AB to match Brady score for score did seem like one -- but they couldn't deliver. So now we are back to wanting a defense heavy team again that can shut down anyone, and I'm just not sure the NFL works like that anymore. I am very sure that the Steelers don't work like that any more.

If we want to win we will need to see 1) More scoring "at will". 2) More long drives. 3) Strong special teams performance. 4) Credible defensive stops (which would be superior to what I saw last Super bowl, by the way)

[polamalubeast]

I actually always blame the offense in these situations. Very few teams can hold the Pats down, and our D is just a bad matchup in general. But the Offense if routinely held by the Patriots to 17, 21 type scores. Since that has been where our big names and big draft picks have been, I always wonder why our strength isn't more competitive in a shoot out? Where are the 35 and 42 point games when we need them? Expecting our style of defense, which is very zone heavy, to work against an offense designed to exploit it just doesn't seem like a reasonable expectation. Expecting Ben, Bell, and AB to match Brady score for score did seem like one -- but they couldn't deliver. So now we are back to wanting a defense heavy team again that can shut down anyone, and I'm just not sure the NFL works like that anymore. I am very sure that the Steelers don't work like that any more.

If we want to win we will need to see 1) More scoring "at will". 2) More long drives. 3) Strong special teams performance. 4) Credible defensive stops (which would be superior to what I saw last Super bowl, by the way)

It takes a team effort to win this game ... The steelers will not win this game if they give 35 points or more, especially if the Pats do just that in 8 or 9 drives ... The defense has to make some stop .. ..The Pats have always had a very good defense for the most part (2017 was an exception) ... If they have no margin for error, the Steelers will not win and this will not be close ... The Pats are not the 2018 Chiefs where the Chiefs had a garbage defense last year

BTW, the Steelers have more played man to man defense against the Pats in the last 2 years and they won one game and the other they were competitive ... They also challenged the opposing WR in the preseason this year, so I hope they will continue to do that no matter what...The steelers were also 6th with the most % of snap in the man to man defense last year.

For our offense, yes they need to be better, but our defense needs to give a chance ... Many give credit to Eli Manning for the success in big game against the Pats, but even if Eli had been very good, especially in the 4th quarter, it was a great team effort by the Giants in their win against the Päts.

[Six Rings]

I like our chances. Okay, on the road vs New England is as tough as it gets. True. But New England lost OL players. They added three new one this week, and expecting realists from three new Offensive lineman so soon is unrealistic. Brady can't handle pressure up the middle. Gronk used to kill us. He's retired now. The Steelers have improved on defense, and we won the last game in the series. I don't care about what happened in 2013 or 2015.

[GoSlash27]

I like our chances. Okay, on the road vs New England is as tough as it gets. True. But New England lost OL players. They added three new ones this week, and expecting results from three new Offensive linemen so soon is unrealistic. Brady can't handle pressure up the middle. Gronk used to kill us. He's retired now. The Steelers have improved on defense, and we won the last game in the series. I don't care about what happened in 2013 or 2015.

And at the same time, we are aware of his vulnerability to this (finally) and have improved our ability to deliver this pressure. Also, there's not much film for ClothesHamper to study.
I like our chances...

[polamalubeast]

I like our chances. Okay, on the road vs New England is as tough as it gets. True. But New England lost OL players. They added three new one this week, and expecting realists from three new Offensive lineman so soon is unrealistic. Brady can't handle pressure up the middle. Gronk used to kill us. He's retired now. The Steelers have improved on defense, and we won the last game in the series. I don't care about what happened in 2013 or 2015.

Our secondary need to have tight coverage if the steelers want the pressure to get to Brady....If Brady always throw under 2 seconds, the steelers pass rush have no chance to put Brady on the ground... Our CB needs to challenge the opposing WR as they did in the preseason against the Chiefs and Titans and live with the result ... I do not want to see our pass rushers or others in the coverage too much, otherwise it's going to be a disaster

The Steelers need to trust our CBs even if they give a big play early in the game ... They are too good to be garbage once again ... This is not 2015 when our best CB was William Gay ...



My concern for this game is our offense .... because as we saw in the playoffs last year, the pats have a very good defense, especially against the pass (Rivers, Mahomes and Goff had a combined of 50% of complete pass only) and the history of our offense and Ben in week 1 in the last couple years has not been good

Let's hope it will not take too long to remove the rust in this game ... I think the rain was a factor for Ben's bad game last year (and Myles Garrett was a monster) but it still a awful game for Ben. ..The year before, Ben had been fine in this game,but it's just the entire team (outside of Antonio Brown) was rusting because they missed all (Bell) or almost all (Bryant) the training camp and it was the first game of JuJu's career and he played as a rookie in this game (0 catch, 2 holding penalty in this game)

2016 against the Redskins, it had taken a quarter before exploding on offense but we must say that the dumb gameplan of the Redskins (put their number 2 CB one against one against AB with without help when you had Josh Norman as your other CB) had helped the Steelers.

They need to find a way to be much better this time!

[polamalubeast]

Sean Davis out for this game?

[HollywoodSteel]

The fact that the Pats are playing with a new center is an advantage we simply have to exploit. Everyone knows that the key to knocking Brady off his game is not giving him a pocket to step into, yet rarely do teams actually pull it off against him. This is the best situation we could have hoped for.

Although the downside to playing the Pats game one is that even if this is the year Brady’s age becomes a factor, he’ll still be Brady at his Bradyiest in the beginning of the season.

Also I’m very confident in our defense this year, but they might take a few games to totally gell. And Bush will only get better with experience. Can he really be what we need from him week one?

I know people are saying we can lose this game and still survive, but if we win it the upside can have HUGE repercussions on the season.

I’m really on pins and neeedles about this game. I’d love to make a statement out of the gate that the Steelers are fine without AB, and are arguably the most complete team in the AFC.

[polamalubeast]

Jarod Mayo will make Patriots defensive play calls vs Steelers on sunday...

[Steeler-in-west]

I see no reason to play zone coverage.

And I still think some of the failure on the road against the patsies is due to the Steelers own poor game planning.

Again, based on talent, we should win

[polamalubeast]

I see no reason to play zone coverage.

And I still think some of the failure on the road against the patsies is due to the Steelers own poor game planning.

Again, based on talent, we should win

I will have no words if they do that

Not only that the Steelers have a much better secondary than 3-4 years ago,the steelers won last year against the Pats because of the defense and the year before, even if I do not believe that our defense had a good game against the Pats in 2017, they had been more competitive and the Pats offense were more loaded than the other years, so the gameplan was fine in this game.

I will be very surprised and very disappointed if they do not challenge their WR and I am confident that the steelers will challenged their WR even on the road, so this is not a concern for me.

[polamalubeast]

Some bad memories with each of those games

2002 - the Pats show the way to exploit what had been a very good Steelers defense was to just throw the ball repeatedly (as Cincy had done late in the 2001 season) while another bad Kordell performance is the start of him losing the starting QB job for good within a month
http://old.post-gazette.com/steelers...eele0910p2.asp

Just see the first 2 interceptions of Kordell in this game it was very early in this game(Only a bit more that 2 minutes into the game!)

It was 2 awful interceptions, especially his 2nd, I do not know what he saw and how it's possible to make a bad pass like that!

[polamalubeast]

Big play can happen at every corner, but outside of this big play, Nelson gave only 53 yards and 4 completions in 9 targets.

I can live if we give some big play if our defenses are able to force several incompletion in this game,especially in 3rd down..I prefer this that to see Brady at 70-75% and convert almost every 3rd down that the Pats have.

The Chiefs defense's biggest problems in this game were their awful run defense

[Craic]

Just see the first 2 interceptions of Kordell in this game it was very early in this game(Only a bit more that 2 minutes into the game!)



It was 2 awful interceptions, especially his 2nd, I do not know what he saw and how it's possible to make a bad pass like that!

That second one almost looked like the receiver on the crossing route gave up on the route. But, there's not enough film to show whether he actually did or not. The first one is what has me more confused. The receiver cuts inside on a double-move, but Kordell threw it as if it was a single move (and threw it much earlier than the move). So, who was at fault there? I'd think a double-move takes enough time that it's something the QB and WR would know is coming. But perhaps not?

- - - Updated - - -

I see no reason to play zone coverage.

And I still think some of the failure on the road against the patsies is due to the Steelers own poor game planning.

Again, based on talent, we should win

I think we'll see zone on situational downs such as third and long in order to keep the play in front of them and push extra rushers at Brady. But in general, I absolutely agree. I do not want to see zone after zone after zone. That said, I have noticed the Steelers CBs lining up much closer to the WRs this year.

[polamalubeast]

[AtlantaDan]

Jarod Mayo will make Patriots defensive play calls vs Steelers on sunday...

Belichick taking to the next level the concept of someone who could come down out of the stands and get the title of a Pats D-coordinator since everyone knows who runs that defense

[polamalubeast]

Belichick taking to the next level the concept of someone could come down out of the stands and get the title of a Pats D-coordinator since everyone knows who runs that defense

Everyone knows who runs their defense except some teams who continue to hire their DC to be their HC like the Browns with Romeo Crennel, the Jets with Eric Mangini, the Lions with Matt Patricia and the Dolphins with Brian Flores ...

2 of his teams are in the AFC East..I heard a funny comment on twitter last week when someone said that Bill Belichick is the GM of the 4 AFC east team

[DesertSteel]

Steelers 27-24