Patriots clinch AFC East with wild win over Steelers

New England (11-3) scored late to take the lead and staved off heartbreaking defeat in stunning fashion in a thrilling win over the Pittsburgh Steelers (11-3). Here’s what we learned from a game that will go a long way toward determining playoff home-field advantage:

1. In a season in which the Steelers have spent much of it playing down to their opponents, Pittsburgh finally played above the opposition — or, perhaps at New England’s level. Either way, what we received was unquestionably the Steelers’ best game of the season. Surprisingly, unlike most of the other contests, it didn’t produce a win.

We saw the two best teams in the AFC at this point go toe-to-toe for a full 60 minutes, and for a while, it looked like Pittsburgh would simply be the better team. We forgot, of course, that Tom Brady still quarterbacks for the Patriots, leading New England on a 77-yard drive in just 1:10 with multiple completions to Rob Gronkowski. Not to be outdone, Ben Roethlisberger’s completion to JuJu Smith-Schuster on a simple drag route ended up going for 69 yards and had the Steelers on the doorstep of a win. They never crossed it — well, they did, but it was overturned — and melted down in the final 15 seconds, with Roethlisberger faking a spike, looking for the back-corner fade and forcing a pass into the middle of the field, which was deflected and intercepted by Duron Harmon. It was a thrilling, unbelievable finish in a battle between the two heavyweights of the conference. Should they meet again in Foxborough in the postseason, we see no reason to not expect a similar performance.

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