By Gene Collier, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Bill Belichick and Eric Mangini (2006)
Final exams aren't until January, obviously, but the test that will be administered today to the Steelers' defense might never be duplicated in either severity or intensity.
It's not so much that this particular band of New England Patriots has either tied or broken 19 NFL records in three months, it's that they're potentially at the launch point of a violent rebound from consecutive games in which they assumed the guise of diffident men with median talent.
I'm guessing Tom Brady might be a little dangerous by late this afternoon in his first appearance since getting out-pitched by the likes of A.J. Feeley and Kyle Boller during unseemly struggles with the Philadelphia Eagles and Baltimore Ravens.
Which Brady won anyway.
On top of all that, they cheat. Or was that quarter million-dollar fine and the stripping away of a first-round draft pick just the league's way of saying spygate was no big deal?
"Coach [Bill] Belichick got fined; that's all over, and they're still winnin'," said Steelers corner Ike Taylor on the topic the other day. "You can wash all that down the drain."
Funny, that's essentially what the league office did when the Pats turned over all video and written intelligence from defensive signals illegally videotaped by Belichick staffers over an extended period -- washed it all down the drain for reasons never quite made clear.
Asked this week if he or his team were hacked off enough over it to draw motivation across an entire autumn, Belichick said only, "We don't talk about it."
In any case, most members of the unit that happens to be playing the best defense anywhere said they've got enough to think about without considering whether the Patriots know a little more about what the Steelers will be doing today than might be, you know, legal.
"We're not worried about it; it wouldn't matter if they did know our calls," said Deshea Townsend, who's coming off a six-tackle performance against Cincinnati. "When you have players who can make plays, they're going to make them. And they have some good players."
Maybe you've heard of some of these guys. Randy Moss, Donte' Stallworth and Wes Welker are catching 16 balls a game in this pass-primary offense, which generally results in 304 air yards per show, and at one point Brady had thrown three or more touchdown passes in 10 consecutive games, one of the aforementioned 19 NFL records.
"There's no doubt they've got a full metal jacket," is the way Mike Tomlin put it this week. "Stallworth can take the top off the coverage. He's got vertical speed."
Straight up, like Superman?
The top of that coverage looks again as though it will be Tyrone Carter at safety instead of injured Troy Polamalu, with Carter joining Anthony Smith, or, if you prefer, "Mr. Bull's-eye." Smith's mindless mid-week guarantee of a Steelers victory won't make things any easier.
Carter says he's not even wondering if New England's coaching staff knows more than it should.
"We've changed our signals," Carter said. "That was blown out of proportion anyway. It's like people say about watching film, when you look at the quarterback and he does his checks, if you think, 'when he does this, then he's going to do that,' it's not right because he changes them anyway.
"We just gotta go out and play."
The Steelers, no matter how few outside their locker room believe this, actually are hopeful that this defense is fully capable of going anywhere and beating anybody. They've allowed only 155 points, 104 fewer than the league average and 32 fewer than the next best figure, Tampa Bay's 187.
Hours after last week's suffocation of Carson Palmer and the Bengals, the one glittery aspect of his team that jumped off the video at Tomlin was his top-rated and still perhaps underrated defense.
"It's pretty uncommon, I guess, when you lose a turnover battle the way we did in that football game, 4-1, and still get a victory; it speaks to the mettle of our defense," Tomlin said. "We put them out there in some tough situations and they responded. I like the direction we're moving in."
Of course, Belichick might like it too. He might like it that, as Carter says, if they do this, it must mean they're going to do that.
"I don't feel like we're close to running the same defense as the last time we played them [September '05]," said defensive end Brett Keisel. "I'm up and moving around now and it's an entire different scheme of blitz packages. They play a 3-4, too, so they're working the same kinds of things, but I don't feel like they're in our heads or anything like that."
To whatever extent Belichick and the Patriots are in people's heads, it is dwarfed by the frequency with which they're in people's end zones. And still, the Steelers can derail New England's unbeaten express this afternoon, but only if certain unlikely prerequisites are met. They must maintain their league-best time of possession average at more than 34 minutes, and they must prevent New England from scoring in any manner not generated directly by Brady. Nothing of any length in the running game. Nothing of any consequence in the always fraught with peril special teams funhouse.
Should he be able to shut up long enough, an interception from Anthony Smith wouldn't hurt either.
Gene Collier can be reached at gcollier@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1283.
First published on December 9, 2007 at 12:00 am
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