Tom Brady
And if Gronk wasn’t a given, Tom Brady most definitely is. The only argument is who is the bigger threat?
Here’s a stat for you that’s made its way throughout Twitter so far this week: in his career against the Steelers, Tom Brady has thrown 30 touchdown passes and only four interceptions. I’m going to go out on a limb and say that Tom Brady might have the Steelers’ number.
Now, it’s been brought up multiple times in the past, but the only way to just slow down Tom Brady is to alter the coverage schemes. The Steelers still, yes still, utilize quite a bit of zone coverage. This is why Tom Brady has the touchdown to interception ratio he does against Pittsburgh. A quarterback like Brady, in a system that he commands, he tear apart zone coverage.
The only hope for the Steelers is to play bump-and-run, man coverage. Yeah, the Steelers are going to get beat sometimes. But the strength of the Steelers is the offense. If the offense can play at a high level, you just have to do enough to make sure the Patriots’ offense doesn’t outscore the Steelers’ offense.
If the Steelers employ another scheme like what happened in the 2016 AFC Championship game, well, this will get ugly really quick.