FOXBORO — In an sincere second Tuesday, Steelers coach Mike Tomlin drew a parallel between Pittsburgh and the Patriots that may be disputed in Foxboro, however needs to be apparent to any exterior observer.
“They’re a transitional group, as well,” Tomlin mentioned. “Like us.”
It’s true. The solely NFL franchises with six Super Bowl titles have been delayed of their respective quests for No. 7. On Sunday, the Pats and Steelers will meet for the primary time since 2019, the final 12 months both crew was considered as a professional title menace.
Over the final two seasons, Pittsburgh paid the worth for clinging to its previous, dragging Ben Roethlisberger again underneath middle effectively after the life in his proper arm was gone. Meanwhile, the Patriots paid for failing to honor their previous, reducing ties with Tom Brady and not using a succession plan, then turning to Cam Newton and a rookie in Mac Jones.
In Year 2 with Jones, the Patriots are nonetheless not positioned to contend. They personal the fifth-worst playoff odds within the AFC, one step above the Steelers, who personal the fourth-worst and picked a quarterback within the first spherical of final April’s draft, the surest signal of an NFL rebuild. Pittsburgh has, nonetheless, stayed afloat, successful 22 video games over the past two-plus seasons.
Because that’s what the Steelers do.
“Fifteen straight (non-losing) seasons,” Bill Belichick famous Friday. “That’s pretty impressive.”
Oddly sufficient, staying afloat can also be how Tomlin complimented the Patriots after calling them transitional.
“I think if you’re playing the New England team, they will always have a high floor,” Tomlin mentioned. “They won’t beat themselves, they won’t be highly penalized, they will play the field-positioning game. They’ll work to win the weighty moments.”
What Tomlin described above is a model. Under Belichick, the Patriots have established themselves as championship shapeshifters who alter their taking part in type each week primarily based on their subsequent opponent. But the tenets of Belichick’s program have been fixed for twenty years.
The Patriots prioritize good, robust gamers who play effectively underneath stress. The group has no allegiance to a specific scheme or type. Only successful.
The Steelers have their very own model, one that nearly pre-dates the Patriots as a franchise. Through strains could be drawn from the Tomlin period again to the Nineteen Seventies, when the legendary Chuck Noll baptized Pittsburgh as a soccer city by his hard-nosed championship groups. Since then, the Steelers have typically been a defense-first operation recognized for his or her physicality and opportunism.
Their entrance workplace even targets the identical forms of gamers at this time because it did underneath Tomlin’s predecessor, Bill Cowher.
“It’s almost like you can look at a college player and say, ‘Oh, he would play there for the Steelers,’ ” Belichick mentioned. “Whether that’s this year, five years ago, 10 years ago, 20 years ago — you can see player’s skills and how they would use them, and this would be a perfect Steeler.”
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While the Patriots and Steelers could diverge in model, overlap is what finest defines their on-again, off-again rivalry.
“Even without (Brady and Roethlisberger), you’re still talking about two teams that are built very similarly throughout the years of how they play the game,” Pats security Devin McCourty mentioned this week. “And what’s important (to them).”
And that’s no accident.
Pittsburgh was the unique bar the Patriots needed to clear on the daybreak of their dynasty. In two of their first three Super Bowl seasons, the Steelers completed with the very best regular-season report within the AFC. Come January, the Pats needed to roll into Pittsburgh and topple them for the convention title. They did.
Belichick received partially by stealing or replicating items of Pittsburgh’s operation, specifically ex-Steeler Mike Vrabel, a staple of his finest defenses and a three-time Super Bowl champion. The Pats performed the identical defensive type, using a bruising 3-4 entrance in an period of four-down protection. And they ran an Erhardt-Perkins offense, similar because the Steelers, although the 2 weren’t related.
Of course, the Steelers additionally took one thing from the Patriots. On Oct. 31, 2004, Pittsburgh ended the Patriots’ NFL report 21-game win streak, a sport Belichick casually referred to Friday as “the Halloween game.” Because no soccer historical past, even for the best coach of all time, could be retold and not using a few Steeler scares.
Noll’s last sport was a 17-10 win on the expense of Belichick’s Browns in Dec. 1991. That day, Steelers quarterback Bubby Brister went 7-of-26 en path to defeating one of many sharpest defensive minds in soccer historical past.
Years later, Pittsburgh beat the 1994 Browns, Belichick’s finest crew in Cleveland, thrice with an unstoppable downfield passing sport. Two staple Steeler performs, one involving 4 vertical routes and one other that paired two vertical routes with quick, out-breaking routes, compelled Belichick after which defensive coordinator Nick Saban to rethink how they essentially known as protection. Neither straight man or zone labored.
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So, they concocted a scheme that might morph into both man protection or zone primarily based on how the receivers’ routes declared downfield. Today, pattern-match protection is taught throughout all leagues and ranges of soccer. Thanks to Belichick, however due to the Steelers. Their excellence compelled the desperation that yielded one other present of his genius.
“They’re always a team that when you play them, you get to see what you’re made of,” McCourty mentioned.
Now, because of league-wide offensive innovation and the general elevation of quarterback play, the NFL has caught as much as the Patriots. They are, just like the Steelers, a crew propped by their previous hoping to race into the long run. The two franchises have by no means been extra alike.
Even Tomlin’s dismount from his long-winded evaluation of the Patriots on Tuesday was completely Belichickian.
“New England is New England,” he mentioned.
On Sunday, the Patriots and Steelers’ shared historical past will give kickoff a weight most Week 2 video games do not carry. A way it means extra.
“I remember a few years ago, Bill said, ‘If you like competition, if you like football, that’s where you want to be,’ ” McCourty mentioned. And I believe any time these groups play, it is a huge deal.”
Sure, the Patriots have received a lot of the Belichick-era battles. And the entire vital ones. But every of them, even the AFC title video games, meant extra as a result of it was Pittsburgh.
That’s rivalry. Real rivalry. Even now, after three years aside and with murky futures forward of every franchise, Pats-Steelers is broadly anticipated to ship once more on Sunday.
Not unhealthy for a pair groups in transition.
Source: www.bostonherald.com