By Zuri Berry, Globe Staff
PITTSBURGH — Four false starts, three sacks and more than enough pressure on Tom Brady equated to a horrendous day for the Patriots offensive line.
"Just not concentrating enough on our part," said right guard Brian Waters. "And not just on the false starts, but on some of our, I guess, mental errors as far as some of our plays."
Supposedly bolstered by the return of offensive tackle Sebastian Vollmer Sunday in the Patriots' 25-17 loss to the Pittsburgh Steelers, the veteran lineman gave up two sacks on the day, including a strip fumble on Brady that led to a safety on the Patriots’ final offensive play of the game.
Veteran all-pro lineman Logan Mankins was no better. He was whistled for two false starts as well, including one in the second quarter — stunting a drive that resulted in a Zoltan Mesko punt — and one later in the same quarter that ended with a Stephen Gostkowski field goal.
Vollmer did have one bright spot. Seeing Steelers linebacker Chris Carter edge up aggressively in the fourth quarter, with 4:21 remaining, the veteran tackle instinctively moved, causing a neutral zone infraction. It put the Patriots three yards away from the end zone with precious time still on the clock, down 23-10. Unfortunately two plays later, he was called for his second false start of the game. The Patriots still scored on the drive, but it was apparent that he was rusty after a month-long hiatus due to a lingering back injury.
Vollmer left the locker room before reporters could get a chance to speak with him.
"We definitely need to do a better job than we did," said Patriots coach Bill Belichick when asked about trouble with the pass rush and secondary. "We had trouble all the way through."
The erratic play of the line was uncharacteristic for a Patriots unit that is routinely praised for its cohesion and protecting Brady.
"I don’t know if they were doing anything different more than we were hurting ourselves," Waters said. "[We were] just playing really out of character for us. But they did a great job. They were doing a great job as far as rushing hard. Everybody they brought in there, those guys were working hard trying their best to get to the quarterback and also trying to disrupt some of our run stuff. They did a great job trying to put their plan in effect. But we did a lot more things to ourselves than we normally do."
It didn’t help that the Steelers held the ball for 39 minutes of the game, dominating the time of possession and leaving little time for the Patriots to figure out their opponent or any rust to wear off.
"It doesn’t take a whole bunch to disrupt an offense, especially when you don’t have a whole bunch of plays," Waters said. "You got to make every one of them count and today we didn’t do a great job of it up front."
Penalties, sacks and mental errors caused by concentration and rust. It was a poor outing that can be blamed solely at the heads of those on the line.
"I think the theme of the day is just we did a lot of damage to ourselves," Waters said. "Honestly, we were more self-destructive than we’ve been all year."
