The Steelers' defense knew they had a tall task coming into a week against Tom Brady, Rob Gronkowski and a Patriots offense that has tortured NFL defenses for years. While Gronkowski did have 9 catches for 168 yards on the game, 69 of those yards came on the final drive at the most crucial point of the game.
We look at that final drive one more time:
Coming into that drive, Gronkowski did have six catches for 99 yards, but they weren't the game-changers that flipped the complete momentum of the game, like he has had in the past against almost every team in the NFL.
The Steelers were employing a mix of man and zone schemes that had, at that point, limited Brady and his offense to just 232 passing yards on 19 completions from 31 attempts. They even had an interception from Vince Williams, the first of his career, to flip the game around in the second half.
But on the Patriots' final drive they went right to their best playmaker, Gronkowski.
For four straight plays, Brady targeted Gronkowski and nobody else against the Steelers' press man coverage. That got the Patriots down to the Steelers' 8-yard line before Dion Lewis ran for an 8-yard touchdown.
The Steelers' plan was to stick to their guns and have confidence in their guys to make plays. It kept Brady from picking at any obvious soft spots of their defense and was a big reason why they were leading going into the Patriots' game-winning drive.
Let's take a look at one of the earlier plays first. Gronkowski is lined up in the slot. Sean Davis is lined up against him in man coverage and does a great job running with him down the field. But Brady throws the absolute perfect pass over Davis' outstretched hand and completes the pass to Gronkowski:
There's a saying that there's no defense for a perfect throw, and this might be the best example of it. Davis does everything you expect of a safety playing man coverage against a tight end who has a six-inch height advantage. That's just not quite enough.
Davis gave Brady and Gronkowski credit after the game:
But it wasn't only man coverage by Davis on Gronkowski, as the Steelers' defense knew they had to mix up their calls against a great quarterback like Brady. Watch how on the final drive, they employed a zone coverage in an attempt to pass off Gronkowski between Sean Spence and Davis.
Brady had a much larger throwing window and made a solid throw to Gronkowski, who was eventually tackled by Mike Mitchell:
The Steelers used a mix of man and zone schemes, but they mostly relied on man coverage throughout the game. But when Brady gets time to scramble around in the pocket like he did on the below play, man coverage becomes more of a liability. That's especially the case when you face an all-pro player like Gronkowski:
There are no easy answers for a player like Gronkowski. His size makes him too big for a cornerback to handle but his athleticism and catching ability make him too good for any linebacker to cover. That's why it takes a larger safety to get the job done. Davis is the tallest starting safety on the team, so he got the call to cover Gronkowski plenty throughout the game.
For the most part, the Steelers did their job defensively as they limited Brady's offense to just three touchdowns in a game where they were missing their ultimate x-factor in Ryan Shazier and arguably their best cornerback in Joe Haden.
But the Steelers will tell you that there is no moral victory in their loss to the Patriots. They know that Brady looked only to Gronkowski on the final drive. But they also knew they had a plan coming into the game and worked on it all week. As William Gay said in the locker room after the game, they still needed to find a way to score more points.
Ultimately when you look at that final drive, the Patriots went to their go-to guy in the big situations, much like how Roethlisberger went to Brown last week against the Ravens as he led the Steelers to their own game-winning drive.
This leaves the question of whether the Steelers should have sold out their schemes to give Davis, Burns and the others who covered Gronkowski help throughout the game. If the Steelers did that, Brady would get the opportunity to pick at any spot on the defense where a single player made a mistake in coverage.
So Keith Butler put trust in his defense to be able to find a way to create stops without sacrificing different parts of his defensive scheme to stop Gronkowski. That ended up not working in the end, but for most of the game, it kept the Patriots in check.
If you had told me the Patriots would have only scored 27 points and Brady threw an interception, I would have bet the Steelers had won. But that's also if Antonio Brown hadn't been hurt and the Steelers' offense had scored more than 27 points for a fourth time in five weeks.
Ultimately the Patriots relied on their biggest weapon on offense, just like the Steelers have in their biggest moments, and Pittsburgh's defense didn't have the answers to slow them down in the final moments of the game.