Jan 22, 2017 5 min read

And so it ends.

It shows that you have to be careful what you ask for.

Earlier in the week, to a man, the Steelers said they had to slam the door on New England’s running game and force the Patriots to pass.

So much for that.

With New England’s running game stuck in neutral, Brady attacked the Pittsburgh secondary like a surgeon, completing 32 of 41 passes for 384 yards and three touchdowns.

Chris Hogan and Julian Edelman seemed to be open whenever Brady needed and he did a nice job of moving the safeties with his eyes whenever needed.

That was classic Brady.

He was on top of his game and it showed.

The Steelers got to him early with an inside pass rush by Javon Hargrave, but they couldn’t get there consistently. And Brady made them pay by finding the open man.

“That’s what that quarterback does,” said Steelers inside linebacker Ryan Shazier. “He’ll find the open spot in the zone and get him the ball.”

He did that time and again to Hogan and Edelman.

@ All of that said, the Steelers had a chance to get back into this game at the end of the first half.

Jesse James caught a ball that was originally ruled a touchdown but was overturned and put at the 1.

DeAngelo Williams was stopped for a 1-yard loss by Dont’a Hightower and Patrick Chung on first down and for a 3-yard loss by Vinnie Valentine on second.

Ben Roethlisberger’s third-down pass to the flat to Eli Rogers was wide and the Steelers were forced to kick a field goal.

Instead of being down 17-13 and getting the ball to start the second half, the Steelers were down 17-9.

They then came out in the second half and went three-and-out. Game, set, match.

That doesn’t excuse the play of the defense. But you know going into a game with Brady that scoring two touchdowns isn’t going to get it done.

@ Sammie Coates has got to catch that deep pass on the opening series. Has to.

That was a pass he was catching early in the season. But after injuring his fingers in a win over the Jets, he provided nothing for the offense.

That wasn’t his only misfire in this game, either. He finished with two receptions for 34 yards on five targets, but realistically probably should have caught all five passes.

Cobi Hamilton also was just two for five on catches, failing to come down with a couple of catchable balls.

Rogers had seven catches for 66 yards but lost a crucial fumble in the third quarter.

The defense will get a lot of blame for what happened in this game, and when you give up 36 points, that’s fair.

But the offense doing little, turning the ball over twice – three times if you count a turnover on downs – and punting four times, twice on three-and-outs, didn’t help.

Pittsburgh had 26 yards and one first down on its first two possessions. That kind of set the tone for this game, even though the defense allowed just a field goal and forced a punt the first two times it was on the field.

You’re just not going to hold Brady in check at home enough to stay in it if the offense isn’t clicking.

@ Le’Veon Bell leaving this game didn’t help. You don’t take a running back who had 59 carries in the past two playoff games out of the equation and have the same offense.

DeAngelo Williams hit the Patriots, who had prepared for Bell’s patient style, with a couple of early runs that he stuck up in there early, but he finished with 34 yards on 14 carries despite having a 15-yard run early.

Take that run away and he had 13 carries for 19 yards.

@ It sounds like James Harrison wants to come back next season. That’s good. But finding his replacement is the biggest challenge this team faces this offseason defensively.

Offensively, finding weapons to complement Bell and Antonio Brown is a must.

Getting Martavis Bryant back will help. Getting Lardarius Green healthy will, as well.

But can you really count on either, Bryant because of his suspensions and Green because, well, he just couldn’t stay healthy this year.

I’ll run down the free agent list and stuff like that in future blogs, so hold your horses on that, but this team is close. Really close.

Last year’s playoff loss in Denver made it more hungry that offseason because it knew that.

This one likely showed it that, while close, it still has some moves to make and some additional growth before it reaches the summit.

@ I thought Ben Roethlisberger played a pretty solid game. Did he match Brady pass for pass? No. But who does?

He put the Steelers in position to make some plays in this game, made some big throws.

This will go down as a loss for him head-to-head against Brady. But this loss certainly wasn’t on him.

@ With Bell out of this game, New England could focus its efforts on slowing Antonio Brown. He got a lot of press coverage with safety help over the top. Brown was OK in this one. He finished with seven catches for 77 yards on nine targets.

But you need your stars to be stars in these type of games and that didn’t happen.

@ Many people were worried that there would be too many penalties called in this game.

Instead, the officials allowed both teams to play, which is the way it should be in a championship game.

But that personal foul in the second half against Shazier? Bad, bad call. That was the first called penalty of the game. And it probably shouldn’t have been.