Pittsburgh Steelers vs. New England Patriots Preview & Prediction | PFF

Pittsburgh Steelers vs. New England Patriots Preview & Prediction | PFF

the Steelers and the Patriots. This game’s in Foxboro. Patriots hosting the Steelers in this one. Where are we starting here? Um, look, I think we have to give credit. I know there’s a lot of talk about Drake May and Raandre Stevenson played well last week. And the offense, look, we got to give credit to this offensive line and the way that they’re pass protecting. That’s going to come up big in this game. The Patriots first two opponents, the Raiders and the Dolphins, they have not rushed the passer well so far this season. We know the Steelers can still rush the passer. I believe they’re third in pass rush grade right now. But you look at this New England pass blocking, 10th in the league in pass blocking grade, 10th in pressure percentage, 13th in the number of pressures under 2 and 1/2 seconds. Last year they were in the bottom three in the NFL of all three of these categories. And you look at all of the new pieces on this offensive line. Will Campbell left tackle. Jared Wilson at left guard had a tough first game but bounced back in a really nice way last week. Garrett Bradberry’s been surprisingly really good. Awenu solid at right guard. Morgan Moses has been closer to average. He’s got the big match up with TJ Watt this week. But I think we have to credit this Patriots offensive line. They’re still figuring things out in the run game, but in pass protection, this so far has been a substantial improvement. They’re going to get tested this week against Watt Highmith, Herbig, Hayward, all the guys that that the Steelers have up front, they can still rush the passer really well. Even despite their struggles in run defense, if the Patriots get in third and long situations, this is the matchup to watch. Drake May looked super comfortable in the pocket last week. I thought he was fantastic with all the clean pockets he was getting. This New England offensive line to me is in the spotlight. These are the types of matchups where if you win them, you could you can kind of consider yourself leveled up here as an entire offense. Yeah, he spent a lot of time and resources upgrading that offensive line, which is much needed, right? They were one of the worst, if not the worst offensive line in the NFL in a lot of categories, specifically pass blocking. And so it’s great to see, hey, with a little bit of extra time, with a little bit less pressure, Drake May is able to deliver in ways like we saw him do when he was at North Carolina. On the Steelers side of things, you know, the offense, I would say that it kind of like is what it is. Like it’s a lot of what we thought that it was going to be. Aaron Rogers has had some nice throws deep down the field, but it’s not plentiful. There’s not a ton of them. It’s going to be much more of a methodical offense there for them. On the defensive side of the football, though, I I’m concerned. I guess is concerned is a fair word about their run defense because it just has to be better from this team. 23rd in the NFL so far in run defense grade with a 59.0 and then they are 20th in EPA per rush allowed. And when I say 20th, I mean like that’s obviously bad. You want to be in this sense the way that I’m talking about it, you want to be first, okay? You want to be able to um have a negative EPA per rush allowed for these teams. And the Steelers are in the back half of the NFL at how easy it is for teams to be able to run the ball on them. And you wouldn’t think that with a lot of the names that they have on their defensive line with TJ Watt and Cam Hayward and Keano Ben and guys like that, but Ben, I think, has struggled in run defense. I I highlighted last week how I felt like uh that the Seahawks were just going straight at him and he was yielding a lot of yards off the line of scrimmage. And that’s something that’s just got to get fixed. It’s got to get fixed here. The Patriots, for as great as Drake May is, they are a team that’s going to want to stay balanced, right? They have Randre Stevenson. They have Antonio Gibson. They have Trayvon Henderson, who I know lost a lot of snaps because of some bad pass blocking last week, but he’s not going to be in the doghouse forever. He’s going to get in the mix. They’re going to want his explosiveness in there. And it’s going to be up to the Steelers to really shore up that run defense because it feels like that’s been a backbone of of what makes this team great is how they can hold you to lower scores. They can get you in those one-sore games and then they feel good about having a quarterback who has sort of seen it all, has all the answers to the test to be able to do that. But you don’t get to do that in my opinion unless you really stop the run. And I just think it’ll be interesting to see how much the Patriots are able to take advantage of that, right? That offensive line that you mentioned there going up against that defensive line of the Steelers. Uh and and really do the Steelers get closer to what their identity has been over the last couple of years. Or do they continue to struggle when it comes to run blocking and getting guys open? Ultimately, I do have faith in this Steelers team. I think it’s going to be a better week for them. I have them winning here 23-20 going on the road and beating the New England Patriots. Uh yeah, this is I I think this might be the hardest game of the entire week to pick because I think both teams have played reasonably decent football at times and then they’ve both also kind of shown their flaws. I think the Steelers lack of explosiveness, they need to find a way to be more explosive, especially if Christian Gonzalez is still going to be out. New England, this is really a big prove it week for their offensive line. If they can pass protect, I would like them to win this game. I don’t have that proven in front of me yet. I’m also going to take the Steelers 20 to 17. But I could see this going either way.

PFF’s Dalton Wasserman and Trevor Sikkema preview the matchup between The Pittsburgh Steelers and The New England Patriots.

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