Post-mortem: Steelers lost to a better team

In football, the team with the better talent usually wins. That was the case Sunday in the Steelers' loss to the Patriots.

The Patriots are the best team in the AFC, as difficult as that may be to admit. The two best teams in the NFL are in the Super Bowl.

I said during the week that for the Steelers to win, Ben Roethlisberger had to take over the game at the outset and prove that he belongs in the same class as Tom Brady. He did not.

I said that the defense had to play their best game of the season. They did not.

I said that the Steelers had to play mistake-free football. They did not.

That is what happens when a team with less talent plays a team with more.

One stat was telling. Roethlisberger finished with a QB rating of 83, while Brady's was 127. That sort of tells the whole story.

Other factors

You can argue that the Steelers would have won with Le'Veon Bell, but that probably did not matter.

You can argue that the Steelers coaches were outsmarted by the Patriots. They probably were, but that really did not matter.

You can argue about some calls in the game, but in truth, I doubt that any of them really mattered.

What mattered is that Tom Brady took over at the outset and carved the Steeler defense for 20 first-half points while the Steelers bumbled their way through it, dropping TD passes, failing to make blocks on the goal line, botching extra points -- all things that Bellichick-coached teams do not do -- as hard as that is to admit.

Not a Super Bowl team

At the beginning of the season, I said that I did not think that this Steelers team was a Super Bowl team, though I picked them to go 11-5. That rationale was primarily because of their defense, but their offense was not Super Bowl caliber either primarily because they were too inconsistent overall.

Let's face it. The Steelers had to have Antonio Brown stretch out the ball over the goal line with nine seconds to go and with no timeouts left against the Ravens to reach the playoffs themselves. They had problems putting away the Bengals the week before that.

They had a huge win over the Cowboys erased when the defense could not hold a lead with less than a minute left and the Cowboys at their own 25.

That kind of inconsistency plagued them all year.

Future

You can argue that the team has a great future because they have some promising young players. They do have promising youngsters, but they really have problems overall.

For instance, three of their top five tacklers on Sunday were defensive backs. That is not good. Where are those outside linebackers?

Jarvis Jones should be history, while James Harrison, whom Coach Mike Tomlin called his best pass rusher, will probably retire for good,

Lawrence Timmons led in tackles with 14, but he is in the last year of his contract. The speedster inside LB Ryan Shazier had just seven tackles.

There is promise, but whether or not this team will have Super Bowl promise in a year is a good question.

They also have a quarterback who is in the twilight of his career. Younger than Brady, he is not in the same kind of physical condition that Brady is. He may not last until 38. Perhaps they should trade up for a QB in the first round this year and gradually bring him along. Landry Jones is not a good long-range option.

So many questions. Now is not the right time to answer them.

Just to root for the Falcons.