The New England Patriots aided the Pittsburgh Steelers in getting a 21-14 win at Gillette Stadium on Sunday by committing five turnovers and seven penalties.
For those reasons, in this week’s “Madden Monday” podcast, Mark Madden of TribLive and 105.9 The X isn’t putting much stock in the Steelers’ win to improve to 2-1.
“I hate to paint this as a victory at all,” Madden said. “It’s going to go into the standings as such. But Trai Essex, the two-time Super Bowl champion on the offensive line with the Steelers, put it best when he said they should ‘watch this tape as if they lost.’ They deserved to lose.
“I’m not sure if they got five takeaways or if New England gave them the ball five times. Those are more turnovers than takeaways.”
I can’t remember a worse win than today. As always, I will take it. But my goodness, the problems are far and wide. It is hard to win on the road in the NFL. No doubt about it. But eyes need to be all the way wide open this week. Watching film as if we lost.
— Trai Essex (@TraiDay79) September 21, 2025
I’ll give the defense more credit than that for making those plays to get the ball back, but Madden continues to take issue with Pittsburgh’s execution on defense and its approach on offense.
“The run defense was bad, again (119 yards allowed). They’ve dumbed Aaron Rodgers down (6.0 yards per pass attempt). They’re wasting DK Metcalf (3 catches, 32 yards),” Madden said. “Despite going against the grain of seasons past and games in New England past, and getting a win at Foxborough, there was nothing about this game that impressed me, besides the occasional timely play the Steelers made.”
Those timely plays included two red zone turnovers and five sacks. Cameron Heyward was a part of both of those turnovers and added a sack. T.J. Watt had two sacks and a fumble recovery.
“I would like to offer Cam Heyward and T.J. Watt congratulations for finally, at long last, doing what they’re paid, almost $60 million between them to do,” Madden said. “What a great accomplishment for them to finally earn a paycheck.”
Based on that analysis, you may not be surprised to hear Madden is anticipating a blowout by the Minnesota Vikings when they visit Ireland to play the Steelers next week.
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The Vikings just trashed the Bengals, 48-10, with backup quarterback Carson Wentz getting the start thanks to an injury to second-year starter J.J. McCarthy.
“Minnesota is going to kill them,” Madden said. “That was an impressive performance they put up, just a couple of days removed from finding out that J.J. McCarthy is out for a while. They put up (48) points. I actually think the Steelers got a lousy break with McCarthy (being) hurt (for) Week 4 in Dublin. I would rather play J.J. McCarthy than Carson Wentz.”
McCarthy is dealing with a high ankle sprain and is considered week-to-week.
Also during the podcast, Madden and I talk about Mike Tomlin’s coaching in this game, Cleveland’s upset of Green Bay, the start of Penguins training camp, Marc-Andre Fleury’s preseason game one-off, the state of the Penguins’ sale, Sidney Crosby’s trade rumors and more.
Tim Benz is a Tribune-Review staff writer. You can contact Tim at tbenz@triblive.com or via X. All tweets could be reposted. All emails are subject to publication unless specified otherwise.
