My crazy, bold prediction

[bksteeler]

I don't care what anyone says. I think if...and it's a big if...they win their next two games and secure a first-round bye, the Steelers go to a Super Bowl, even if they have to go through New England. 

Honestly, I had a hard time seeing the Steelers beat the Patriots twice this season. Had they won this game, I would have been hoping like heck we wouldn't face them again. 

But to lose the way they did, sure it hurts, but it will make the Steelers more motivated, and they know now that they can stand toe to toe with them, unlike last year's debacle. 

That said, I think they do need to win the next two. If they blow one, and I would guess it would be next week's if any, and they have to play three playoff games to get in to the Super Bowl, we're toast.

That said, the best scenario, though I'm not counting on it, is that we win the last two and the Patriots turn up another stinker against the Bills or Jets. 

Call me blind. Call me someone wearing rose-colored glasses. I don't care.  

Go Steelers!!!!

[Crash]

Todd Haley still on the payroll?  

No chance if he is.  

Btw, last three plays of the game?  ALL in the red zone?  Bryant not even on the field, and Handless-Bey was.  

So again, in a key moment in a big game, with Antonio Brown already off the field via injury, Todd Haley once again decides to get cute rather than just trying to win games by using your talent.  

Our offense is all about Todd Haley showing everyone how smart he is, so this team, this fan base, and Ben's career all suffer.

[Crash]

Have to win 2 and the Pats lose only one and the Pats are the #3 seed.

[mcmillenandwife]

I don't care what anyone says. I think if...and it's a big if...they win their next two games and secure a first-round bye, the Steelers go to a Super Bowl, even if they have to go through New England. 

Definitely do-able. 

Should've won yesterday. No WAY should the Jessie James TD catch have been overturned. Yes, the ball moved. But he secured it, controlled it all the way through and even though the ball shifted when he hit the ground, he never lost control. Maybe I could understand if the ball squirted free when he hit the ground. But it didn't. Jame had complete control of the ball. Terrible call by the officials. Just awful.

This catch "process" rule is among the worst in football right now. We all know a catch when we see it. That was a catch and a TD. The refs blew it.

And I've just gotta say... New England was penalized 2 times for 4 yards. 4 yards? Really? One penalty was a false start, the other was the illegal touch when the receiver caught the ball after running out of bounds. That's it. I find that UNBELIEVABLE because I saw holds, illegal contact, offensive and defensive PI, blocks in the back, a late hit to Ben in which he took a helmet to the chin, etc. by New England throughout the game. They simply weren't called.

And since when is a false start penalty only 4 yards instead of 5? This wasn't a "half the distance" scenario; it happened deep in Steeler territory.

A gigantic FUCK YOU to the refs who were neither even-handed nor accurate with their calls.   And again, that overturn at the end... unforgivable. 

Kudos to Martavis Bryant in this game. He didn't come up huge... but he came up big. Great job catching the crossing route for the go-ahead TD before the half while being blatantly interfered with (wasn't called, of course). 

Sean Davis... Gronk owned you. OWNED. Not a surprise, but man... all you had to do was hang onto to that deflected pass that floated right to you at the 2-minute mark and all would've been forgiven. Instead, you made up for the dropped INT by allowing Gronk to catch 3 straight passes for 69 yards, plus the 2-point conversion. No soup for you. 

Why was Heyward-Bey in instead of Bryant at the end???

All that said... we had 'em. We HAD 'em. No Brown, no Haden, no Shazier... and we had 'em. That call at the end was a catch. 

Looking forward to the rematch, wherever it happens. Get well soon, AB.

[Rollers]

So what happened to if you have control of the ball and it crosses the goal line it's a TD? What was so hard about that? We now play two teams with 4 wins combined. This is a classic case of the Steelers swallowing the cherry pit and choking. Neither team has a legitimate NFL QB at this point. Watch the struggles. We could quite possibly blow our chance at a bye week. God help us all

[Cali-Steeler]

Our only chance to beat the Cheatriots- would have been if we played them there in Pittsburgh. We are not going in To Gillette stadium and winning I'm sorry

[RaynorShyne]

Todd Haley still on the payroll?  

No chance if he is.  

Btw, last three plays of the game?  ALL in the red zone?  Bryant not even on the field, and Handless-Bey was.  

So again, in a key moment in a big game, with Antonio Brown already off the field via injury, Todd Haley once again decides to get cute rather than just trying to win games by using your talent.  

Our offense is all about Todd Haley showing everyone how smart he is, so this team, this fan base, and Ben's career all suffer.

That's it.  I forgot.  "Handless Bey" threw a ball into triple coverage.

[Crash]

Todd Haley still on the payroll?  

No chance if he is.  

Btw, last three plays of the game?  ALL in the red zone?  Bryant not even on the field, and Handless-Bey was.  

So again, in a key moment in a big game, with Antonio Brown already off the field via injury, Todd Haley once again decides to get cute rather than just trying to win games by using your talent.  

Our offense is all about Todd Haley showing everyone how smart he is, so this team, this fan base, and Ben's career all suffer.

That's it.  I forgot.  "Handless Bey" threw a ball into triple coverage.

Ben wanted to spike the ball.  He was told not to by Todd Haley.  Eli was the ONLY player who ran a pass route.  

If Ben takes a sack?  Game over.

If Ben throws it away from the pocket to avoid a sack?  That's grounding.  Game over.  

But you blame Ben and leave the golf coach off the hook.  

Enjoy watching the Pats play in the Super Bowl.

[bksteeler]

Just LOVE all the negativity.

Look, good points are made.

1. Get your best players on the field, particularly at crucial times. Period.
2. Dumb decision to go for the pass on the final play. But not for the reasons mentioned. So now my points.

It was dumb to go for the final pass play because they were totally not prepared to do so. You have only Eli running a pattern and everyone else is standing around. Worse, Eli was running over the middle in tight coverage. You just don't throw the ball there in that situation. I want to scream like Tunch it was interference, but truth be told, if the situation had been flipped, and Brady's pass was tipped and knocked away, I would have said good play. Maybe it was interference, maybe it wasn't, but I can't complain about the no-call. It simply wasn't that blatant. But when you throw the ball over the middle with all those defenders there, anything can happen, and many of them bad. I don't know if there was anywhere Ben could have thrown that pass and completed it.

But getting back to the totally unprepared part: I surely hope in the future that they practice this situation in the future. What does the coach want to do when there are no timeouts, clock under 20 seconds and running and it's third down. Do we go for the endzone? Do we spike. EVERYONE on the offense should know that!!! Ben didn't know. Apparently all but one of the receivers didn't know. That's inexcusable.

The next part is on Ben. Again, no way he should have thrown the ball. Once he saw the coverage and no one else running a pattern, throw it away over everyone's head. They're not calling a penalty on that, if you throw it over Eli's head.

Other points:

Third down, up 24-19 and a chance to put the game away. Send everyone on patterns beyond the first down marker. Utterly stupid to do otherwise, and it cost us. I was screaming at that.

Why weren't we doubling Gronk on that final drive? He was killing us and no one else was going to beat us.

Davis: Catch the ball.

Did Juju really have to run across the middle of the field? I think he could have probably gotten just as many yards going straight up the sideline and still gotten out of bounds? Again, does he know the situation?

Maybe someone at the game, or at with the all-22 view can tell us, but what were Ben and the O-line doing when Juju was running? Standing or running after him?

All these detail things: Those are the things they need to clean up. They were the difference between winning and losing this game.

End rant.

That said, I stand by what I said. They take care of business the next two weeks (no guarantee), I'll take my chances in Foxborough. But here's something else to think about. It looks like KC may get in. They seem to have the Patriots' number just like the Patriots have the Steelers.

So assuming no upsets, it could very well be Steelers-Jags, Patriots-Chiefs. Who knows. We may just get lucky as we did in 2005, 2008, and 2011 and avoid them altogether. Still, it would be nice to slay the dragon itself, rather than avoid it.

[Crash]

1. Get your best players on the field, particularly at crucial times. Period.

And that's been Haley's #1 problem for years. But he gets a free pass because Ben was accused of rape and Toddy's Dad used to work for the Chief.

[RaynorShyne]

I don't care what anyone says. I think if...and it's a big if...they win their next two games and secure a first-round bye, the Steelers go to a Super Bowl, even if they have to go through New England. 

Definitely do-able. 

Should've won yesterday. No WAY should the Jessie James TD catch have been overturned. Yes, the ball moved. But he secured it, controlled it all the way through and even though the ball shifted when he hit the ground, he never lost control. Maybe I could understand if the ball squirted free when he hit the ground. But it didn't. Jame had complete control of the ball. Terrible call by the officials. Just awful.

This catch "process" rule is among the worst in football right now. We all know a catch when we see it. That was a catch and a TD. The refs blew it.

And I've just gotta say... New England was penalized 2 times for 4 yards. 4 yards? Really? One penalty was a false start, the other was the illegal touch when the receiver caught the ball after running out of bounds. That's it. I find that UNBELIEVABLE because I saw holds, illegal contact, offensive and defensive PI, blocks in the back, a late hit to Ben in which he took a helmet to the chin, etc. by New England throughout the game. They simply weren't called.

And since when is a false start penalty only 4 yards instead of 5? This wasn't a "half the distance" scenario; it happened deep in Steeler territory.

A gigantic FUCK YOU to the refs who were neither even-handed nor accurate with their calls.   And again, that overturn at the end... unforgivable. 

Kudos to Martavis Bryant in this game. He didn't come up huge... but he came up big. Great job catching the crossing route for the go-ahead TD before the half while being blatantly interfered with (wasn't called, of course). 

Sean Davis... Gronk owned you. OWNED. Not a surprise, but man... all you had to do was hang onto to that deflected pass that floated right to you at the 2-minute mark and all would've been forgiven. Instead, you made up for the dropped INT by allowing Gronk to catch 3 straight passes for 69 yards, plus the 2-point conversion. No soup for you. 

Why was Heyward-Bey in instead of Bryant at the end???

All that said... we had 'em. We HAD 'em. No Brown, no Haden, no Shazier... and we had 'em. That call at the end was a catch. 

Looking forward to the rematch, wherever it happens. Get well soon, AB.

What gets me is the inconsistency.   If a RB is running to the goal line and touches the pylon - instant TD.  The ball routinely comes flying out after they hit the ground.   Is a TD NOT a TD when the ball crosses the plane?  

WTF is a 'catch'?   "Survive the ground"??   If that's the case, those who maintain records need to go back through the NFL films vault and change some shit.....  

The ground CANT CAUSE A FUMBLE, but it can "disturb the validity of a pigskin cradling". 

That rule doesn't survive my ballsack.

[mcmillenandwife]

That rule doesn't survive my ballsack.

[RaynorShyne]

ROFL - The NFL purposely stirring the shit pot:

"John Harbaugh thought Steelers had beaten Patriots"

http://www.nfl.com/news/story/0ap3000000895288/article/john-harbaugh-thought-steelers-had-beaten-patriots