Huh...

In his January 3 TMQ column on ESPN Page 2, Easterbrook claims the following (by the way, his argument is that the Patriots should be concerned as "pass wacky" teams don't win the Super Bowl: "Pass defense requires mental discipline and concentration; pass defenders might tend to slack off a bit in the regular season but bear down in the playoffs, when there's no tomorrow. When the Steelers played the Patriots this year, Pittsburgh used a backed-off, almost careless coverage and seemed to shrug about the whole thing, as if thinking, "So we lose to New England today, so what, we're back in business next week." Nobody thinks that way in the playoffs."

There are a number of issues that I have with this.

1. He basically claims that the Steelers did not care whether they won or lost the game, which is hard to believe on many levels. For a moment, ignore the issue of individual and team pride. Consider the fact that the Steelers were still locked in a pretty good battle with the Browns for the North title at the time and had at least that reason to want to win. Conceivably, the Browns could have won the division.

2. This argument basically frees the Steelers from all blame for the loss (beating a team that would eventually go undefeated meant nothing to them, while it mattered tremendously to the Eagles, Ravens, and Giants, among others) and takes away any praise from the Patriots (they were playing against a team that had, in effect, given up, so the win was sort of hollow).

3. In week 15, the Steelers were 9-5, the Browns 9-5 (Pittsburgh won the series), Jacksonville was 10-4, San Diego 9-5, and the Titans were 8-6. By Easterbrook's logic, the Steelers knew in week 13 that they would eventually clinch a playoff birth and were thus already tanking games.

4. It's just stupid.