OK, everybody breathe
a sigh of relief. We won’t have to hear about the Patriots’ perfect 2007-08 season for the rest of our lives.
Unfortunately, there’s a hard reality for Steelers fans. The Patriots’ demise shows just how
far the Steelers are from being a Super Bowl-caliber team.
It’s been well documented by now that the Giants’ decided to play to
win in Week 17 and challenge the Patriots’ perfection. Even though they had a playoff berth locked up, the Giants played
their starters and had a 12-point lead in the third quarter before the Patriots rallied for a 38-35 win.
The eventual Super Bowl champions weren’t
the only ones who made the Patriots sweat in the stretch run of the regular season. The Eagles, Ravens and Jets, three non-playoff teams, were all competitive against the Patriots as they closed in on 16-0. The Steelers? They went down
quietly 34-13 in Week 14 at Gillette Stadium. The puts them in the company of the one-win Dolphins as the only opponents who didn’t give the Patriots a game in the last six weeks of the regular season.
The Eagles led the Patriots
in the fourth quarter before falling 31-28 at Gillette Stadium in Week 12. The Patriots were in trouble the following week,
trailing in the final minute against the Ravens before getting all kinds of breaks and rallying for a 27-24 win.
The burden of perfection was getting heavier, but Anthony Smith’s infamous guarantee lit a fire under the Patriots,
and they breezed past the Steelers. The next week, the Jets hung around the whole game before succumbing 20-10. Then the Patriots
had their last easy game, a 28-7 win over the Dolphins, before completing a perfect regular season with their win over the
Giants.
In the
playoffs, the Jaguars played the Patriots tough in a 31-20 loss. Then the Patriots won the AFC championship game 21-12 in
unconvincing fashion. They beat a Chargers team that played 98 percent of the game without all-world running
back LaDainian Tomlinson and with a quarterback, Philip Rivers, whose ACL was completely torn.
Then the Patriots met their match in the
Super Bowl.
You
could draw a parallel between the 2007 Patriots and the 2004 Steelers, who went 15-1. Both teams peaked at about midseason.
The 2004 Steelers took down two undefeated teams, the Patriots 34-20 and the Eagles 27-3, in consecutive weeks to go to 7-1
at the midway point of the season. The 2007 Patriots came back from a 10-point fourth-quarter deficit to beat the Colts 24-20,
had their bye week, then crushed the Bills 56-10 to improve to 10-0. Both the ’04 Steelers and the ’07 Patriots
kept winning after hitting these peaks, but their vulnerability eventually caught up with them. For the ’04 Steelers,
it came in the AFC championship game. For the ’07 Patriots, it came in the Super Bowl.
The Patriots were beatable, but the Steelers
didn’t come close to doing it. There’s a lot of work to be done.
