Jan 21, 2017 5 min read

Much has been and will continue to be made of the Steelers’ record against the Patriots and Tom Brady. And more will continue to be said on today’s pregame shows about how the Steelers have lost their previous two AFC Championship games against the Patriots and Brady.

Guess what? None of that matters.

These Steelers have little in common with the 2001 or 2004 teams that lost to the Patriots in the AFC Championship.

Yes, the Patriots are 9-2 against the Steelers with Brady at quarterback, including those two playoff wins. And they’ve never beaten him at Gillette Stadium.

But the only game in that series that really matters is the one played earlier this season in Pittsburgh.

The Patriots won that game, 27-16, but led just 20-16 entering the fourth quarter against a Landry Jones-led Steelers team.

Guess what? Jones won’t be starting today when the Steelers face the Patriots in the AFC Championship. Ben Roethlisberger will be under center.

Oh, and the Patriots won’t have tight end Rob Gronkowski, who has eight touchdowns in five games against the Steelers, including one in the meeting back on Oct. 23.

The Steelers also will have five different players in their starting lineup on defense than they had in that game.

Bud Dupree and James Harrison will be the starting outside linebackers instead of Anthony Chickillo and Jarvis Jones. Ryan Shazier, who was limited for that game by a knee injury, will start at inside linebacker over Vince Williams. L.T. Walton will get the nod over Ricardo Mathews at defensive end and Sean Davis will be the starting strong safety, not Robert Golden.

When the Steelers had that grouping on the field, they’ve been, perhaps not a dominant unit, but one that’s pretty darn good, allowing an average of 17 points per game while beating Buffalo, Cincinnati, Miami and Kansas City.

Perhaps Mathews returns this week to start at defensive end over Walton, but that’s a minor change. Since the Steelers decided to go with Davis and Harrison in the starting lineup in Week 10, they haven’t lost and have been one of the hottest defenses in the league.

They’ll need to be against Brady.

But the Patriots also will have to deal with Pittsburgh’s offense. And that’s no small task.

The offensive line is playing outstanding football. Because of that, running back Le’Veon Bell, already one of the league’s most dangerous weapons, has been unstoppable.

Bell has averaged 146.5 yards rushing per game in his past eight starts. And as we saw last weekend in Kansas City, he can help the Steelers shorten a game, even when the offense isn’t scoring touchdowns.

The Steelers controlled the ball for more than 34 minutes against the Chiefs as Bell rushed for 170 yards, giving him 337 yards in the team’s first two playoff games. He needs seven yards against the Patriots to break Franco Harris’ team record for rushing in a single postseason.

Bell, Harris, Marcus Allen and Terrell Davis are the only running backs in league history to have back-to-back playoff games with 150 or more rushing yards.

Given how well the Steelers have run the ball, the Patriots won’t be able to stop that.

Sure, they could load up with nine players at the line of scrimmage and sell out to stop Bell, but that would put Antonio Brown one-on-one on the outside. And, as the Miami Dolphins quickly learned, that’s no recipe for success, either.

So what will the Patriots do?

The guess here is that they’ll try to limit Brown’s impact on the game. It’s better to be beaten slowly by Bell and at least have a chance to slow the Steelers in the red zone – as the Chiefs did last week – rather than have Brown beat you quickly.

The Steelers just have to make sure that when they get into scoring position – they punted just once last week and have done so just three times in two playoff games – they score a touchdown, not settle for a field goal.

As for slowing the Patriots, the Houston Texans showed last week the key is applying pressure up the middle against David Andrews and rookie left guard Joe Thuney and make sure you hit Brady.

Brady completed just 47 percent of his passes last week, throwing two touchdowns and two interceptions. Those two interceptions matched his regular season total.

If the Texans had gotten even adequate quarterback play, the AFC Championship might be at Heinz Field today.

But they didn’t.

The Steelers are 5 1/2-point underdogs in this game, but the bet here is that they win it outright against the Gronkowski-less Patriots.

Take the Steelers to win, 27-23.

Green Bay (plus 5)

at Atlanta

Green Bay over Dallas was the one pick missed in this column last week and the Packers, and most notably, quarterback Aaron Rodgers will not be underestimated again.

Dallas quarterback Dak Prescott got off to a slow start in his first playoff game, allowing the Packers to sprint out to a big early lead. But once the Cowboys figured out they could attack the Packers depleted secondary, they started having success.

Atlanta won’t have any such problems. The NFL’s highest-scoring team won’t have any lulls. Matt Ryan and Atlanta’s receivers, led by Julio Jones, will make sure of that.

So expect a shootout here, with the team that has the ball last probably winning it.

The sexy matchup would be the Packers against the Steelers in a Super Bowl rematch.

But something says Atlanta will find a way to win this one at home.

Take Atlanta, 38-34

Last Week: 3-1 ATS; 3-1 Straight up

Overall: 126-112-5 ATS; 151-90-2 Straight up