Callahan: The Steelers are who the Patriots should have been

FOXBORO — Thursday night should be the Spider-Man Meme Bowl.

Two defensive teams standing across the line of scrimmage pointing at spitting images of themselves on an icy Pittsburgh night. Two backup quarterbacks simply trying to survive in prime time. Two of the league’s best head coaches, future Hall of Famers with sparkling defensive resumes, facing off for perhaps the final time as rivals.

Instead, one team is 7-5, and the other is the Patriots.

The Pats stink. They’re a bad team, a sad team. And injuries or no injuries, the Patriots should have been better than this.

How much better? They should have been the Steelers. Or at least in their neighborhood, with a preseason over-under win total one game lower than Pittsburgh’s 8.5; a team with postseason hopes that weren’t buried more than a month ago.

Even at 7-5, the Steelers are no world-beaters. They’ve been outscored by 39 points on the season. They’ve also been blown out twice, the same number as the Pats, and lost by 14 Sunday to the tanktastic Cardinals. Their strength of schedule thus far is virtually identical to the Patriots’ (a .522 opponent winning percentage to .527).

Pittsburgh’s season-long turnover luck is almost identical to the Patriots’. The Steelers have recovered 45% of fumbles to the Pats’ 48%. Their injury luck is somewhat comparable, with Pro Bowlers Minkah Fitzpatrick, Diontae Johnson and Cameron Heyward all missing several games, along with Pat Freiermuth, one of the league’s best tight ends.

All of the Steelers’ wins have come in one-score games, just like the Patriots (15-10 at the Jets, 29-25 versus the Bills). The trouble for Bill Belichick and Co. is they are 2-8 in one-score games, including last weekend’s catastrophe against the Chargers.

Now, that is not a case of Lady Luck spurning the Patriots. They’ve deserved this fate with their play.

Historically, a minus-106 point differential in the NFL is representative of a 3-9 team. The Pats average 12.3 points per game, worst in the league. You can’t win if you don’t score, and they’ve scored seven points or fewer in almost half their games.

And yet – and yet! – the Steelers’ offense may be suffering from worse coaching than the Patriots this season.

Ex-offensive coordinator Matt Canada held his title for 45 games, and never coached the Steelers to a 400-yard performance. Pittsburgh snapped that streak immediately after Canada’s firing two weeks ago. Turns out, that 421-yard breakout, in a 16-10 win, was just a dead cat bounce.

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The Steelers scored 10 points last weekend against Arizona’s defense, a bottom-5 outfit by points allowed, DVOA and EPA. Their offense also ranks bottom five in scoring and has most of the season. So how are they doing it?

The chief difference is their young quarterback hasn’t held onto his grenades after pulling the pins.

Mac Jones did that in all five games he got benched and/or threw a pick-six, and still leads all quarterbacks in turnover-worthy play percentage, per Pro Football Focus. Bailey Zappe, in his first start last weekend, offered tangible improvement by simply tossing his grenades out of the Pats’ sputtering tank.

In Pittsburgh, Kenny Pickett hasn’t lost a fumble and owns an interception percentage of 1.2%. That’s tied for the lowest mark among starting quarterbacks this season, and sits lower than the career percentages for Tom Brady (1.8%) and Aaron Rodgers (1.4%). Pickett also ranks 26th in QBR, one spot ahead of Jones, but he’s managed to succeed by simply not screwing up.

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Patriots captain Matthew Slater identified the other difference this week to the Herald, when asked about the Steelers’ success in close games.

“You’ve just got to limit your mistakes. When you get in those tight games, you’ve got to take care of the football, you’ve gotta eliminate dumb penalties. And when the game’s tight, you’ve got to be at your best,” Slater said. “And the team that can do that with the most consistency is going to be able to win those games. And they’ve done that.”

That comes down to coaching. Mike Tomlin is a better coach now than Belichick, who has quietly hinted the Patriots’ record in close games is more meaningful than it is amid all this losing; as if that record was a result of dumb luck instead of his handiwork, as we all believed during the dynasty days.