PITTSBURGH — Rejoice, Patriots' fans. Sunday marked the end of New England's regular-season road slate for 2018, the conclusion of a sad and sorrowful tale for the Patriots' offense.
As the postseason looms, the home-road splits for the New England offense are jarring. The Patriots’ closed out their regular-season road slate averaging 21.6 points per game away from Gillette. That includes three games this year where the New England offense barely broke into double digits with 10 points. In all, the last time the Patriots’ offense was this anemic away from home when it came to scoring points?
It was 2009, when they averaged 22.1 per game on the road in the regular season.
The good news? They don't play any more games on the road, at least when it comes to the regular season. But for a team that will now likely have to spend a sizable portion of the postseason on the road if it wants to reach its ultimate destination, the offensive struggles away from Gillette could be a major obstacle.
“We’re obviously haven’t played well on the road,” said quarterback Tom Brady. “Obviously, what we’re doing isn’t good enough. It’s a cumulative thing. We’re out here as a team trying to compete (and) when you’re on the road, you have to play well. Some things are just a little bit more challenging on the road. We have to embrace those things, and we just haven’t done a great job on that.”
No one preaches the value of complementary football more than the Patriots. But on Sunday against the Steelers, the offense let the defense (and special teams) down, setting the stage for New England’s second straight gut-punch of a road loss.
• The offense was flagged for eight of the 14 penalties, including two on a late drive that saw the Patriots reach the Pittsburgh 5-yard line, only to be pushed back to the 21 because of a false start on left tackle Trent Brown, and later, a holding call on Marcus Cannon. New England was in a second-and-16 when Brady was flushed from the pocket and ended up tossing a bad ball for the end zone in the direction of Julian Edelman that was picked off.
WOW.@joehaden23 picks off TB12!
?: CBS
WATCH: https://t.co/wt3rDg2WEM #HereWeGo pic.twitter.com/gOBPJBiLp7
— NFL (@NFL) December 16, 2018
• Five straight drives ended in punts for the New England offense. It was the longest such streak of the year for the Patriots, who never got inside the Pittsburgh 45-yard line in those five possessions. A sizable part of those struggles? The fact New England couldn’t get much of anything going on the ground. The Patriots did end up with 96 rushing yards (and a 5.1 per-carry average), but they had just 29 yards on the ground in the first half.
• New England was 0-for-3 in the red zone. There was the Brady interception, the turnover on downs at the end of the game, and a third-quarter field goal from Stephen Gostkowski. In addition, the Patriots started 1-for-7 on third down, and ended 3-for-10. In all, other than a first-quarter scoring strike from Brady to Chris Hogan, the Patriots were kept out of the end zone all afternoon.
Meanwhile, the defense wasn’t perfect -- the run defense was gashed for the third straight week, yielding 158 rushing yards and 6.3 yards per carry -- but it made more plays than the offense. New England forced a pair of turnovers on two picks from Duron Harmon and had two sacks of Ben Roethlisberger (Kyle Van Noy and Jonathan Jones). Special teams downed a punt on the Pittsburgh 1-yard line and Gostkowski was 1-for-1 on field-goal attempts and connected on his lone extra-point opportunity.
At the end of the day, this loss — which was brutal, given what was at stake — is on the offense. Afterward, Edelman was one of several offensive players in the New England locker room to offer a mea culpa for the inability to finish.
“Without a doubt. (The defense) held a good team to … how many points did they have? Seventeen,” he said, shaking his head. “We hold ourselves to a high standard. But we got outplayed today. We put ourselves in situations we couldn’t pull ourselves out of. We have to start over — I don’t know about start over, but we have to turn the page and work hard and go out and have a good week of practice.”
“I mean, we could have done a lot of things better to not let them score 17 points,” Harmon said when asked about Edelman’s comments. “There are some plays we want back — obviously, the play I want back is the touchdown to Antonio Brown. I was supposed to be more inside and give more help to Jason (McCourty) on that play, but I left him on an island against a great player.
“Like I said, there are plays we all want back. Today, obviously, didn’t go our way. We’re disappointed. But we still have some season left. We’re still in a situation where we can help ourselves. We just have to go out and get back to winning ballgames.”
For what it’s worth, it marked the second consecutive game the quarterback has made what turned out to be a fatal, game-changing decision in the red zone. Last week against the Dolphins, he lost track of timeouts at the end of the first half, and a late sack left the Patriots with nothing for the efforts in a game they ended up losing by one. On Sunday against the Steelers, on that fateful fourth-down turnover, he appeared unnerved by a collapsing pocket and flung the ball near the goal line. That play ended in a brutal pick by Haden, a play that was later turned into a Pittsburgh field goal.
“I’ll have to look at it. But I thought (Pittsburgh) played good,” Brady said when asked about the offensive struggles. “I thought they made some plays. We certainly had some opportunities out there. I give them credit. They made some important plays when they needed to. Our defense played great. Special teams played great. We just have to do better offensively. A tough loss.”