Jul 16, 2016 5 min read

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I was filling in for Stan Savran on ESPN 970-AM Friday when the news came down that Tom Brady was going to drop his appeals and would serve his four-game suspension for his role in deflating footballs before the AFC Championship two years ago.

Caught a little by surprise by the whole thing, I did something I don’t usually do. I changed my mind about the whole thing in the course of talking it out on the air.

At first, I thought Brady missing the first four games of the 2016 regular season would be a monumental thing for the rest of the AFC.

I figured Steelers fans would be pretty happy about the whole thing. And I’m guessing they still are.

But maybe they shouldn’t be.

Had Brady sat out the first four games of 2015 as was originally expected, he would have missed the season opener against the Steelers. That would have been a reason for Steelers fans to celebrate. Pittsburgh would have won that game instead of losing 28-21.

But this is different.

Don’t get me wrong, I still think Brady sitting out four games is monumental. But not in the way you think.

Yes, the Patriots aren’t likely to win all of those games without Brady. In fact, they’re probably going to lose their opener at Arizona with Jimmy Garoppolo at quarterback.

But they probably would have lost that game with Brady as well. Arizona’s a good football team. And good football teams don’t typically lose their home openers.

But the three games after that are all at home, against Miami, Houston and Buffalo.

The game against Houston is a Thursday night contest and that won’t give Garoppolo much of a chance to prepare, but the home teams have done pretty well playing on Thursday nights, so it could actually be a good thing for him.

And I also reminded myself of how the Steelers responded in 2010 when Ben Roethlisberger was suspended for the first month of the season.

With Dennis Dixon and Charlie Batch playing quarterback, the Steelers were a play or two away from going 4-0, instead going 3-1 thanks to a 17-14 loss to the Ravens in a game in which Jeff Reed missed field goal attempts from 49 and 45 yards.

During that stretch, the Steelers also won a game at Tennessee in which they passed for 21(!) yards and rushed for 106, scoring a touchdown on a reverse on the opening kickoff by a rookie named Antonio Brown.

The point is, the Steelers did what they could to cobble together some wins without their quarterback, relying heavily on running back Rashard Mendenhall – who rushed for 1,273 yards and scored 13 touchdowns that season – and a very good defense.

Pittsburgh went 12-4 and would go on to lose to Green Bay in the Super Bowl. But the players that I talked to regarding that season after the fact said they weren’t going to allow the fact they were playing without their starting quarterback to open the season be an excuse for failure.

Expect the same from New England.

So even though Garoppolo has thrown just 31 career passes in two NFL seasons, Belichick and his staff will formulate a game plan to help the young QB succeed. And the rest of the team will play with more intensity as well.

You can also expect Brady, when he returns, to play with a chip on his shoulder. We’ve seen a highly motivated Brady light the league on fire in the past. Does a 50-touchdown season in 2007 after the Spygate ruling ring a bell?

All that said, Brady does turn 39 in August. And as we saw last season with Peyton Manning, 39-year-old quarterbacks can fall off quickly.

But Brady also doesn’t have the mileage on him that Manning did. After all, Manning had missed an entire season after having multiple neck surgeries that left him with a constant numbness in his throwing hand.

Brady has no such restrictions. And he was good enough last season to throw for 4,770 yards, 36 touchdowns and just seven interceptions.

For the Steelers, who I believe are in the running with New England as the best team in the AFC, however, this is an opening.

If for some reason the Patriots start at something less than 3-1, Pittsburgh gets an opportunity to host the Patriots and Brady in Week 7. Win that game at home and, coupled with a loss or two in Brady’s absence, the Steelers could have the inside track at home field advantage in the AFC playoffs.

At the very least, they would have a solid shot at a bye.

Of course, Pittsburgh plays in a much more balanced division than does New England. Cincinnati will be good again this season and Baltimore should bounce back from a sub-par 2015. Only games against Cleveland are gimmees in the AFC North.

The rest of the schedule, however, isn’t all that tough. If Pittsburgh gets to 12-4 with a win over the Patriots in hand, it could find itself playing home games for a shot to get to the Super Bowl. And that’s never a bad thing.

But I expect the Patriots to go 3-1 without Brady, which is exactly what I would have picked their record to be with him in the lineup. After that, we’ll see if he still has the same old magic touch he had in previous years.