The titans aren't the Pats, but those first couple drives made me feel like we won't embarrass ourselves week 1. I don't think a win is likely though in Foxborough with BB having all offseason to prepare.
Well I was wrong. We embarrassed ourselves. The Steelers played like dog sh**. Our offense had maybe 3 decent drives. One sputtered because we ran the same running play 3 times in a row, another ended with a field goal when we were down by 3 touchdowns, so we were still down by 3 scores with not much time left.
It looked like we took almost no risks, and when we did take risks it was just Big Ben launching the ball down field 1-2 yards out of reach from James Washington, or directly into the arms of the safety. Our O-line is supposed to be awesome, but on almost every down where we needed 1 yard for a first down we passed the ball and Moncrief dropped it. Without AB we need Juju to fill the AB role and for someone to step up at the WR2 position. It's clear that Ben wants it to be Moncrief, but he couldn't catch a cold yesterday. I'm not sure if we need to move on and try to have Diontae Johnson fill that role, or if Moncrief can turn it around.
I didn't think our defense looked terrible except on 2-3 plays where they just bashed the Pats receivers hoping to get them to the ground, only for them to bounce off and keep running. How about some real tackling? Also, we got almost 0 pressure on Brady. The only way to beat the Pats is to fluster Brady and the few times we did get pressure he was forced to throw it away. Mark Barron and Devin Bush played pretty well, but didn't show quite enough speed to stop James White or Burkhead.
Overall, it looked like a team just going through the motions to me. We were outcoached and outplayed in every way and I don't think we can beat the Pats this year if Brady stays healthy. If we have a shot of going far in the playoffs we'll need another team to take them down.
That said, I don't think our team is as bad as it looked yesterday (and I don't think the Ravens are as good as they looked). I think the Steelers still have a very solid shot of winning the AFC North, and we just need to make the playoffs to have the opportunity to make some noise.
On to Seattle.