Steelers-Jets Preview: Take II

This may seem at first like it's a reboot of the Steelers-Hated Ravens preview from last week, but bear with me.

I am aware of the fact that the Jets are a great team and they have a number of talented players. They have a savvy, confident coaching staff and they beat two of the best quarterbacks in the league -- if not the best quarterbacks in the league -- in back-to-back weeks in Peyton Manning and Tom Brady. They're productive on offense and stingy on defense.

They also beat the Steelers in Week 15.

I am aware of all of these things, but I still feel as though the Steelers will win on Sunday and advance to Super Bowl XLV. I am confident of this, but I am not as confident of this as I was that the Steelers were going to beat the hated Ravens in the Divisional Round. The weird thing is that I'm less confident in the outcome, but I have more reasons why the Steelers will win this time around.

It's complicated, so allow me to explain...

It's All About Match-ups:

The Jets matched up well against the Patriots and Colts because they have such great quarterbacks. In the case of both teams, the offense was better than the defense. In the case of both teams, the success (or failure) of the offense was intrinsically linked to the success (or failure) of those two quarterbacks. Kill the head and the body will die.

Manning and Brady are so good that they make the players around them better. If the Patriots had beat the Jets -- and I'm glad they didn't -- then one of the main points I was going to make was that the sum of the parts for the Patriots is greater than the whole. They work well together as an offense, especially in the passing game, even though they don't have a great deal of talent at the individual level. If the Steelers were able to isolate on individuals and win those match-ups while simultaneously getting to Brady and making him worse, they could shut down the New England offense. That's what the Jets did in the Divisional Round.

I don't think they can do that to the Steelers on Sunday because the Steelers have too many talented players in the passing game. If the Jets use their talent to win individual match-ups and take away Mike Wallace and Hines Ward, there's still Heath Miller. Miller missed the last game with a concussion -- which I think was a bigger deal than the Polamalu injury in that game -- and the Jets were allowed to focus on shutting down Wallace, Ward, and Emmanuel Sanders, forcing Matt Spaeth to try and beat them. Matt Spaeth sucks something awful, so he was not able to accomplish this.

Take away Ward, Wallace, and Miller and Sanders and possibly Antonio Brown can still beat you. They can still beat the Jets. Even if New York wins a high percentage of the individual match-ups in coverage -- which they're used to doing with great players like Revis and Cromartie at cornerback -- the Steelers passing game can still be successful. That was not the case in the Colts game, the Patriots game, or the first game between these two teams.

We Already Took Their Best Shot:

As some highly-intelligent, very pedantic blogger already pointed out, the Jets pulled out all the stops in the Week 15 meeting, while the Steelers showcased a very vanilla game plan.

As much as most football players would have you believe that they don't care what's said in the media and what people outside the locker room think, I think the Jets really care. The psychology of the team is based in part around head coach Rex Ryan. Ryan grew up as the son of Buddy Ryan, a notoriously meticulous and critical coach, so one would have to assume he brought a little of that home. That means that young Rex spent his formative years seeking approval and admiration and that has carried over into who he is today. That has influenced how his player approach games and situations.

The Jets came into Heinz Field in Week 15 having just been blown out by the Patriots and losing at home to the 7-9 Dolphins. People were starting to doubt that they were a good team. The best way for them to prove that they were a good team was to go on the road and beat a good team, which is exactly what they did. They reached deep into their bag of tricks and I don't know how many more they have left.

In addition, the Jets scored nine points on a safety and a kickoff return for a touchdown. I'm not discounting those points. The Jets scored them fair and square. I'm just saying that I don't see them getting a safety and a special teams touchdown on Sunday. They pulled out all the stops, Troy and Heath were injured, and they still needed a safety and a special teams touchdown to win the last game.

After all the crazy stuff that happened against the hated Ravens, anything is possible. I just don't think it's likely.

Psychology of a Quarterback:

New York was able to break Manning and Brady down by hitting them, sacking them, and pressuring them. Ben Roethlisberger doesn't seem to wear down or get rattled by contact. He had a great game against the hated Ravens despite being sacked six times. Now, he could always do something stupid, but the timing and consequences of those dumb decisions cannot be predicted.

Mark Sanchez is a great, young quarterback, but he's still a young quarterback. He will get better and he will have more shots at the postseason, but I don't think he's ready yet. Sanchez made it to the AFC Championship game last year, but his experience tells him that all he knows how to do is lose the AFC Championship game. Roethlisberger knows what's at stake and he knows what he needs to do to win this game. This isn't to say that trends can't shift or change, but I don't think they shift or change on Sunday.

But, There's Always Santonio:

Santonio Holmes seems to do his best work in the playoffs. He has an ax to grind with the Steelers because they randomly traded him in the offseason. He's one game away from the Super Bowl. Ike Taylor said that he wanted to knock Holmes out of the game.

Santonio has plenty of motivation, so here's hoping that he doesn't fully channel that and end up taking over the game instead of getting knocked out of it.

Overall, I think this game is going to be a higher scoring affair than most are predicting. I think the defenses will set the offenses up with field position and turnovers. I don't think it will be quite the scoring fest that Steelers-Hated Ravens was last week, but I think it will be comparable.

I also think the Steelers win by a touchdown, but it will be a close, hard-fought game throughout.

In other words, take the Steelers and the Over (38.5).

Prediction:
Steelers 27, Jets 20