Jan 18, 2017 5 min read

PITTSBURGH – Playing football at the ripe old age of 39 is not something a lot of people have done in the NFL.

And the Steelers believe the key to beating the New England Patriots in the AFC Championship game Sunday at Gillette Stadium is reminding 39-year-old quarterback Tom Brady just how hard it is to continually pick his aging body up off the turf.

It’s something the Denver Broncos did in the AFC Championship last season when they defeated the Patriots, 20-18. It’s a formula the Houston Texans repeated last week, though with different results, as New England won, 34-16.

The Broncos hit Brady an amazing 20 times, sacked him four times and intercepted him twice.

Houston didn’t have that same kind of success but still hit Brady eight times and sacked him twice. The Texans limited Brady to a career playoff-low completion percentage of 47 percent while intercepting him twice, matching his total from the regular season.

“If Houston would have had any more offensive players or plays, they could have won that game,” said Steelers defensive end Stephon Tuitt. “They were taking Tom Brady down, hitting Tom Brady. After the play, they had a couple of flags. I understand that. But when you’re in a game, you want to get to him. You want to make him rattled. You want to make him upset. Sometimes, you’ve just got to sacrifice it. If it’s after the play, you’ve got to get this guy (to know), hey, we’re coming for you. That’s what the Texans were doing.”

Knowing that and doing it are two different things. Brady was sacked only 15 times on 432 pass attempts this season.

The Steelers lost to Patriots, 27-16, Oct. 23. The Steelers failed to sack Brady as he threw 26 passes. The Steelers, who are 2-7 against Brady, used a coverage-oriented defense in that game, usually rushing only four players.

They have been much more aggressive with their blitzes since that loss. Pittsburgh had nine sacks in its first seven games of the regular season compared to 31 in the final nine games and has added six more in two playoff wins.

The Steelers say the key to pressuring Brady is blitzing up the middle.

Because Brady gets rid of the ball so quickly, getting to him from the outside is often difficult and also gives him escape lanes. He scrambled five times for 13 yards in the first meeting with two of those scrambles going for first downs.

With pressure up the middle, however, there’s little time to escape.

“I noticed they were singling up (center David Andrews) with some of their rush guys,” Tuitt said of Houston’s game plan. “That helped put pressure on Brady. They did a lot of overloading on one side and then coming from the other.

“You can’t line up and show him your defense because he will pick you apart, just like Peyton Manning. If you give Peyton Manning another chance on the football field and you’ve already shown him 50 or 60 plays of your defense, then he’s going to decode you. We have to play that cat-and-mouse game. It’s up to our front seven, our front four, to make him do things he doesn’t want to do.”

If the Steelers can do that, it will make things in the secondary. Safety Mike Mitchell knows Brady is excellent at finding a defense’s weak point.

“You have to be very disciplined in every look that you give him,” Mitchell said. “You have to be very mindful in every way that you move. You don’t want to move too soon, move too early. Another thing that he’s really good at is manipulating the safeties. He throws a really good deep ball, he’s very good at moving a guy from one hash to the other just to hit you on a seam, so it requires a lot of eye discipline to defend.”

If the pass coverage and rush mesh, the Steelers believe they can win.

“We have to make the pressure in his face be so unbearable that when he thinks it’s a great throw, it’s intercepted or a third-down incompletion,” Tuitt said.

Wide receiver Antonio Brown apologized to his teammates Wednesday both on social media and in person for posting a streaming video Sunday from the Steelers’ locker room following their playoff win over Kansas City. Brown said he got caught up in the excitement of the momement after not being able to play in the AFC Divisional Playoffs last year at Denver because of a concussion. … Tight Ladarius Green returned to practice on a limited basis Wednesday as he attempts to return from a concussion. Several players missed practice Wednesday because of illness, including kicker Chris Boswell, offensive lineman B.J. Finney, receiver Darrius Heyward-Bey and quarterback Zach Mettenberger. Sitting out because of injuries were safety Sean Davis and linebacker Vince Williams. In addition to Green, linebacker Anthony Chickillo and safety Mike Mitchell were limited.