Keith Butler building the Steelers defense to blitz Tom Brady into oblivion

Pittsburgh’s offseason blueprint is no secret: build to beat Brady.

Tom Brady and his Patriots defeated Pittsburgh twice last season, including in the AFC Championship game. In that game, a 36-17 win for New England, Brady abused Pittsburgh’s base-but-not-actually-their-base Cover 2 defense, completing 76 percent of his passes and throwing for 384 yards and three touchdowns. New England won the Super Bowl, and then spent the majority of the offseason unloading and restocking talent, just as Bill Belichick is wont to do. At worst, New England is no worse than they were six months ago, which indicates that the road to Super Bowl LII will probably run through Foxborough.

The Steelers, as the near-consensus second-best team in the AFC, are once again New England’s primary challenger. Keith Butler is rightfully concerned about the Patriots’ offense, which has led him to adopt a candidly straightforward, but refreshingly conventional defensive strategy: pressure Brady until he starts spewing profanities at his offensive line (which, as a brief aside, seems kind of like something Brady would do, anyway).

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