Patriots and their mystique await the Steelers in Foxborough, Mass.

The 13-year-old is a seventh-grader at St. Albert Middle School and he is a huge New England Patriots fan. The season prior against the Patriots, he caught nine of 11 targets for 133 yards and a touchdown, though that touchdown came in the final seconds of a game that the Pats had in the bag.

Pittsburgh’s best pass rusher, Bud Dupree, resides on the left defensive edge.

Is Brady better than Ben Roethlisberger? Yes. The Steelers beat Miami 30-12 in a wild-card game and edged Kansas City 18-16 in the divisional round. The NFL is a quarterback-dictated league, and no quarterback has ever wanted to dictate a playoff run more than Tom Brady wants to right now. New England Patriots AFC Conference Championship game, see the information at the bottom of this article. The Steelers have the sort of defense that can cause him trouble. This is a team that continues to drill down on “details” and “assignments” and falls back on what’s saved their season over the past two months: Simply playing football better than the team across from them. The Patriots, by the way, have not allowed a 90-yard rusher in 24 straight games and thus Bell will need some receiving yards on Sunday. And that doesn’t bode well for Tomlin’s chances at solving the Brady puzzle Sunday.

The AFC title game will undoubtedly be New England’s toughest test to date.

Then, there is the Patriots’ recent mastery of the Steelers. The Falcons and the Packers have passing and running games ranked in the top 10 in DVOA. That said, the under is 5-1 in the Patriots’ last six conference championship games and is 5-1 in their last six games after accumulating more than 350 total yards in their previous contest.

Oddly, Roethlisberger has never faced the Patriots in a postseason game at New England. “They’ve been great just rushing the quarterback, making plays for their team, strip sacks, forced interceptions, a lot of big plays”.

Most recent meeting: October 23: Patriots 27, Steelers 16. In 29 regular-season games with New England, King hasn’t played a snap with the Patriots’ defense. There are reasons, however, to believe the Steelers can limit the Patriots’ ability to move the ball. Brady’s career numbers are significantly worse when Gronkowski is out of the lineup, and that trend has continued this season. I expect this game to be a competitive one as well, but I’ll take the Patriots. “We’re going to have to just rise to the occasion”.

The Steelers have no players or coaches with Utah ties, in contrast to six years ago when BYU alumni Brett Keisel and Chris Hoke and Utah products Chris Kemoeatu and Stevenson Sylvester accompanied them to the Super Bowl.