With Tom Brady’s retirement from the Tampa Bay Buccaneers this week, that assures one thing for the Pittsburgh Steelers.
Well, two things.
First of all, there’s another team that is now thrust into the offseason quarterback carousel (unless head coach Bruce Arians really believes his own Blaine Gabbert hype).
Secondly, it guarantees Brady won’t have a 16th opportunity to wipe the floor with the Steelers defense when Tampa is scheduled to visit Heinz Field next season.
Yes, normally what is assured when the Steelers face Brady is dejection and agony. In the 15 games Brady played against the Steelers (12 regular season, three in the playoffs) he went 12-3. All three of the playoff matchups were New England victories.
In the regular season, he was 9-3 with a touchdown to interception ratio of 29:5 for 3,744 yards and a completion percentage of 68.8. His passer rating was 111.1.
The playoff games yielded five touchdowns, no interceptions, 706 yards, a completion percentage of 71.6 and a rating of 118.6.
So you can only imagine what would’ve happened if Brady and company rolled into town next year coming off a season in which he had 43 touchdowns and 5,316 yards.
But lost in the fog of so many painful beat downs at the hands of Brady and the New England Patriots over the years, Brady leaves behind in Pittsburgh a few other things as part of his legacy.
Aside from pain and suffering.
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For instance, some of the happiest days ever at Heinz Field were the result of wins over Brady’s Patriots.
There was Joe Haden’s interception late in the 17-10 win the week before Christmas in 2018. Remember? That was when the Steelers entered the game at 7-5-1 and kept their flickering playoff hopes alive as, miraculously, Jaylen Samuels ran for 142 yards.
On Halloween weekend 2011, Ben Roethlisberger outdueled Brady,
And of course, there was Roethlisberger’s rookie season of 2004 when the teams clashed on Halloween en route to Big Ben going 13-0 as a starter. They knocked off the previously unbeaten defending Super Bowl Patriots 34-20, a week before also ending the unbeaten Philadelphia Eagles’ hot stretch, 27-3.
Those were the best two afternoons of football atmosphere I’ve seen on the North Shore for regular-season games since that building opened its gates.
That said, if it’s not Brady and the Bill Belichick Patriots on the other sideline, those games are footnotes. Memorable wins like those only become burned in our brains to that degree when a hated rival is vanquished on the other sideline.
Especially one that was as hard to beat as Brady was.
However, Brady gave Pittsburgh football fans another parting gift as part of his history. Something else besides the misty-water-colored memory of an occasional upset underneath the bright red ketchup bottles.
He also gave us excuses. And, boy, do we love those!
You know, the “Well, we woulda had three or four more Super Bowls if it weren’t for being good in the AFC at the same time as the Patriots” excuse.
As we outlined in 2019, however, that’s complete hogwash. The Steelers got in the way of the Steelers failing to win more Super Bowls. Not the Patriots.
Brady’s Patriots beat Roethlisberger and Mike Tomlin as a tandem in the playoffs just once (2016 AFC Championship Game). The Jaguars and Broncos beat them twice each.
But it sounds good when we say it, though, right? “If it weren’t for the Patriots…” When we say it like that, it’s an easy way to rationalize the many disappointing defeats that have occurred in the postseason (often as a home favorite) since Brady burst on the scene in 2001.
I mean, we’ve said it enough times to speak it into existence. Now we believe it. But c’mon. Roethlisberger was the quarterback here for 18 years. He won two Super Bowls. His season was ended by Brady two times. He lost a year due to injury.
In the other 13 seasons, a quarterback not named “Brady” got in the way. Some of those names include the likes of Blake Bortles, David Girard and Tim Tebow.
Don’t fall for the “Well, regular-season losses to the Pats impacted their seeding, too” trope. As that link illustrates, nowhere close to the degree as Steelers apologists would have you believe.
Then there were the Spygate and Deflategate excuses. “Well, if Brady wasn’t cheatin’ cuz he knew the defensive signals, and if he wasn’t deflating all of ‘em footballs n’at…”
OK. After Spygate and Deflategate, the Steelers were 1-5 against Brady and were outscored 161-98.
And, of course, there was the excuse of the Jesse James game.
The video is an explanation from @NFL SVP of Officiating Al Riveron on the reversal at the end of the #NEvsPIT game. pic.twitter.com/hm5EeoZTER
— NFL Football Operations (@NFLFootballOps) December 18, 2017
Yup. You got me on that one. If the refs and replay don’t get in the way on that call, the Steelers likely wind up with home-field advantage in the playoffs that year. Maybe the Patriots have to come to Pittsburgh and the Steelers would’ve gotten a little postseason revenge against Brady for what happened in the 2016 AFC title game.
The Steelers didn’t have to give up 45 points to Jacksonville at home after their bye in the playoffs as the No. 2 seed though, did they?
Alright. Enough when it comes to opening up old wounds. Because there is one other thing Brady gave to Pittsburgh.
He was an excellent foil. He was a meticulously etched emperor lording over the AFC atop a mountain.
He was Muhammad Ali. And similar to how Joe Frazier and Ken Norton never got to be Ali, we remember them all the more readily because at least once or twice they beat him.
Maybe Big Ben and Peyton Manning and Phillip Rivers are like Frazier and Norton and Leon Spinks. Other giants who walked with the greatest of all time.
Just, more often than not, one or two steps behind.
Tim Benz is a Tribune-Review staff writer. You can contact Tim at tbenz@triblive.com or via Twitter. All tweets could be reposted. All emails are subject to publication unless specified otherwise.
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