"Today was a pretty big disappointment for us," said left guard Logan Mankins. "We came into the game with high hopes, and we didn't play very well. I can only speak for the offense, but the second half was pretty ugly. You saw a lot of the mistakes we made, and you can't win playing games like that."
Playing against Pittsburgh's top-rated defense, the Patriots (7-5) couldn't hold on to a slippery football on a raw, rainy evening in New England and as a result they slipped in the playoff race, failing to keep pace with the Indianapolis Colts and Baltimore Ravens, both of which won yesterday to move to 8-4. Those teams currently hold the two wild-card slots in the AFC.
The only good news for New England is that it is still just a game back in the AFC East as the Denver Broncos busted the New York Jets (8-4). But with four games to play, the margin for error for the Patriots is as thin as the razor blades made by the company whose name adorns their home field.
"The Jets lost, didn't they?" asked Mankins. "Ah, see, we'd be in first place. We blew a big one today. As the season goes each game gets bigger and bigger, so it's going to be another big week."
The tide-turning, turnover-binge stretch of play started innocently enough when Pittsburgh took its first lead of the game on a 25-yard field goal by Jeff Reed with 5:39 left in the third quarter.
Rookie Matthew Slater, filling in for Ellis Hobbs, who was dealing with cramps, muffed the ensuing kickoff, the ball bouncing off his chest and then hitting his foot before being recovered by Pittsburgh's Keyaron Fox at the Patriots' 8.
Two plays later Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger found Hines Ward for an 11-yard touchdown and a 20-10 lead.
Slater's stunning mistake turned out to be the start of a nightmarish stretch of five straight giveaways - three fumbles and two interceptions - for the Patriots. Cassel was strip-sacked on back-to-back drives by Pittsburgh linebacker James Harrison, the first of which led to a Reed 20-yard field goal.
Harrison's second strip-sack resulted in Reed missing from 40 yards, but Troy Polamalu intercepted a Cassel pass that deflected off the fingertips of Benjamin Watson, leading to Reed's fourth field goal.
