Brady's Patriots Squash Steelers Pride

First off, Pittsburgh safety Anthony Smith did not "guarantee" a Steelers victory over the Patriots. That was a creation by the press. Smith actually made a perfectly innocent statement in saying, "I guarantee we'll win if" — emphasis mine — "we make our plays." Any player before any game could say as much. Secondly, Smith should have kept his mouth shut and understood that anything he said before a game like this was going to be taken out of context. And thirdly, he should have understood that if newspapers quoted him on anything, the New England Patriots were going to make him pay. The sight of Smith frantically pursuing Patriots receivers Randy Moss and Jabar Gaffney on long touchdown passes stands as the lasting image for the Pittsburgh Steelers' 2007 season.
Actually, the idea that this was ever going to be a game in the first place was a press creation. Through their first 10 games, it might have looked as if the Steelers had a crack at beating the Patriots and winning the division. They had, after all, the league's best defense, at least on paper, and in Ben Roethlisberger one of the two or three best passers in the league. But this edition of the Steelers is a team that finds ways to lose games it should not only win, but win handily, especially on the road. In their fourth game of the season, they lost, unforgivably, to a bad Arizona Cardinals team, 14–21. Two games later, they lost by a field goal to the equally unimposing Denver Broncos.
But any illusions that the Steelers were in a class with the Patriots should have been dispelled with their 19–16 overtime loss to the Jets on November 18. If that didn't do it, then their 3–0 squeaker against the winless Miami Dolphins a week later should have been the wakeup call. After all, beating Miami 3–0 when you're playing at home is as close as you can come to losing without actually losing.
Forget talent and potential: In consecutive weeks the Steelers, playing against two teams that had, otherwise, a combined 3–21 record, scored 19 points on offense and allowed 19 on defense. I can understand Smith's confidence that his team could beat the Patriots; he's paid to be confident. But how on earth, after watching the Steelers play the Jets and Dolphins, could so many experts get suckered in?
With 10 minutes to play in the third quarter, the Patriots pulled off a play that symbolizes the contemptuous ease with which they played all afternoon in the 34–13 victory. Tom Brady took the snap and fired a lateral to Moss, who had taken a step back from the line. Moss dropped the ball — a fumble, since the pass was a lateral — and then calmly scooped it up and threw it right back to Brady, who then lofted a long pass to Gaffney in the end zone. The Patriots don't have to do things like this to win games: The bravado was just for anyone, the Colts or Cowboys in particular, who might happen to be watching. Brady and Moss looked like two camp counselors playing a game of touch with children.

Source: ALLEN BARRA