Scout’s Eye: Kareem Hunt, Todd Gurley show special talents

Not to be outdone, the league’s leading rusher, Le’Veon Bell, was just as impressive as Hunt, McCaffrey or Gurley.

The Steelers lost Antonio Brown pretty early in this game and most assumed that Bill Belichick would then have little problem focusing on Bell and really limiting the damage he could do. That certainly was not the case at all in the rain in Pittsburgh. But in the biggest game of the day with an insane ending, the truly unstoppable force was Rob Gronkowski, who finished this massive game with nine catches for a whopping 168 crucial yards.

Pittsburgh, a very heavy zone coverage team, went out of their comfort zone and played a very high percentage of press man-to- man coverage by their standards. In fact, they did it quite well. But you know why teams hesitate to play a lot of man against New England? Because no one can cover Gronkowski.

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Gronkowski got the better of other Steelers defenders on a few occasions, but just destroyed Sean Davis over and over. Gronkowski was at very best on New England’s final drive showing exceptional body control to go down and pick a ball off his shoelaces. Gronkowski highlighted, but obviously this was a very well played game with both Brady and Ben Roethlisberger (without Brown for the majority of the game) playing at a very high level. And needless to say, there was also plenty of drama ending with probably the most memorable final play of a game of the year.

This matchup of AFC powerhouses could have gone either way, but if they are to meet again, Pittsburgh must find a better solution to the huge problem that is Gronkowski.