Landry Jones, Mike Tomlin, Le’Veon Bell

Former Secretary of State John Kerry, the former U.S. Senator from MA, met with his home-state New England Patriots following their 27-16 victory over the Pittsburgh Steelers on Sunday.

Jones, for the most part, was right. Having the injuries pile up and now, without quarterback Ben Roethlisberger, they knew it would be next to impossible; but they certainly weren’t going to just give up and let it happen.

Yesterday’s story told the tale of a 27-16 loss to the New England Patriots, and for that reason alone it had no happy ending. Landry Jones attempted 47 passes without getting sacked and looked comfortable in the pocket. He followed it up with an equally nice pass in the corner of the end zone to Darrius Heyward-Bey for a 14-yard touchdown.

Anyone who wondered how they would stack up without Roethlisberger got their answer Sunday.

Though New England’s control of the game was only sporadically threatened, what struck Brady the most were the missed opportunities. And Jones has been known for the occasional curious throw into a crowd of defenders during his three-plus years in Pittsburgh.

With the win, the Patriots move to 6-1, the move two games ahead of the Steelers in the AFC, and even at this early juncture, this was a game that could have implications down the road in January. Jones isn’t the Steelers quarterback of the future, and he’s not even a good starting quarterback. Jones’ protection was excellent. He and Bell who remain, close friends, exchanged jerseys after the game. Universally respected by his ownership and players, Tomlin’s greatest asset is arguably his ability to get maximum effort from his players in less-than-favorable situations.

They did exactly what they wanted to do, except score. “You take away the top of our offense running down the field, Julian does a great job underneath”.

A 12-play, six-and-a-half-minute drive by the Steelers had cut the Patriots’ lead to 20-16 11 seconds into the fourth quarter. Sunday proved to be one of his toughest challenges this season, going against All-Pro receiver Antonio Brown. Malcolm Butler did that Sunday, and had a major interception in front of Brown in the first quarter. while Brown finished with seven catches for 106 yards, most of those came on a third quarter 51 yard completion. Bell has been masterful in four games.

“We need to get all the pieces back together”, offensive lineman Marcus Gilbert said Monday. “It wasn’t the game plan”.

“We just got to the red zone a lot of times and turned the ball over, you can’t have that”, Bell said. It’s a small margin for error against a team like that.

If you go through the list of backup quarterbacks in the National Football League, you will be hard pressed to find many that are clearly better than Jones. Yinzers love to criticize Tomlin for his clock management and game management and he served them up a beauty when he sent his field goal unit out on a 4th and 3 at the New England 36 with 9:00 left in the game. The balance of the offense running the ball, passing the ball is huge.

– One of the primary Patriots storylines this week involves kicker Stephen Gostkowski, who’s now missed five kicks (three field goals, two extra points) in seven games this season. There were still two safeties back there and Gronk split them both and was right at the hash there. “I don’t think it’s a long-range concern, but it’s fair to mention that outside of Butler, cornerback play was not at the level you want to see on a consistent basis”, said Reiss.