The most significant obstacle for the Pittsburgh Steelers to overcome throughout much of the Ben Roethlisberger era was the New England Patriots. The two teams played each other 14 times during that period and the Steelers only won four of those games. Two of the losses came in AFC Championship games during the 2004 and 2016 seasons. Granted, Tom Brady and the Patriots were a significant obstacle for everyone over that period, but the Steelers were rarely able to even make it a close game.
One of Tom Brady’s favorite weapons throughout most of those seasons was WR Julian Edelman. Edelman released a short video on his TikTok page on Sunday morning ranking teams that he hated to play in the playoffs. The Steelers landed at number three, but the comment he made when making that ranking is sure to ruffle some feathers of the Steelers’ faithful.
“You knew what Pittsburgh, they do what they do,” Edelman said. “They’re gonna put a linebacker on me?”
@julianedelman 2013 and 2015 in Mile High still gives me nightmares. @WynnBET ♬ trap hip hop(1396717) – Jasper Lab
In six career regular season games against Pittsburgh, Edelman had 34 receptions on 48 targets for 341 yards. In his lone playoff game in the 2016 season’s AFC Championship Game, he had eight receptions on 10 targets for 118 yards and one touchdown.
With Edelman spending a lot of time as a slot receiver over his career, the Steelers would often find themselves with a linebacker aligned over Edelman, as he suggested in his video. This proved to be a mismatch as Edelman’s crafty route running and footwork was a difficult task for linebackers to cover.
Here is one example of the Steelers trying to cover Edelman with linebackers. In this case it was OLB Bud Dupree and ILB Ryan Shazier in zone drops and neither carried Edelman inside as Brady found him for a big gain across the middle on one of the first plays of the championship game.
And here is ILB Lawrence Timmons attempting to cover Edelman in man coverage. It went about as well as you would expect with Edelman generating plenty of separation out of his break for a big third down conversion. These issues are not isolated to Edelman and the Patriots. The Steelers have continually had difficulty avoiding this type of mismatch under head coach Mike Tomlin’s defensive system.
