New England Patriots

Morning sports update: Tom Brady is making the Steelers rethink their defense

Tom Brady and Patriots fans celebrate his 10-yard touchdown pass to Julian Edelman against the Pittsburgh Steelers during third-quarter action in the AFC Championship game at Gillette Stadium. Matthew J. Lee/Globe Staff

By Nicole Yang

2 minutes to read

Last night’s Red Sox game featured a walk-off ninth-inning homer by Christian Vazquez, a spectacular catch that sent Austin Jackson over the wall, and a standing ovation for Dennis Eckersley.

Steelers won’t settle for being picked apart by Tom Brady, Patriots again: “With Tom Brady, you can’t let him see the same defense too much during the game,” Pittsburgh’s defensive coordinator Keith Butler said. “Because if he does, then he’s not pulling the ball down, and he’s letting the ball go, the timing is all perfect, and he’ll eat you up. You’ve got to make him pull the ball down a little bit – make him freeze where he’s not real decisive of where he’s going to go with the ball. That’s hard to do with a guy like that because he’s been playing for a lot of years and he studies the game. We can’t be vanilla playing him. Not that we were real vanilla when we played him. We tried some stuff, some false blitzes. But they caught us a couple of times. We made some mistakes, and it ended up hurting us. We’ve beat them before, but it has been a long time.”

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“I think this year, we’ll play a little bit more man-to-man with them,” Butler said. “I think if you watch the Super Bowl, Atlanta tried to play more man-to-man with them, and their usual answer is, ‘we’re going to hurry up and get you at the line and spread everybody out and pick the mismatch.’ They’ve got quick receivers, and we’ve got to be able to match them.” (USA Today)

Christian Vazquez’s walk-off home run lifts Red Sox over Indians:

Vazquez hit a three-run homer with two outs in the bottom of the ninth inning and the Red Sox pulled off the final rally of a wild game Tuesday night, beating the Indians 12-10 despite an astonishing catch by Jackson. (Boston.com, via AP)

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Watch Austin Jackson’s sensational catch for the Indians at Fenway Park: ‘‘Really you’re just trying to get back to the wall and try to read it. That particular one, I got back and I tried to get to the fence first,’’ Jackson said. ‘‘When I jumped, I caught it and I realized I was about to take a tumble on the other side.’’ (Boston.com, via AP)

Dennis Eckersley does not want to ‘talk it out’ with David Price: “He’s received no apologies from Price, Sox manager John Farrell, or any of the players who applauded when he was verbally ambushed by Price on the team charter back on June 29. And since Price is evidently still proud of his outburst, Eckersley has decided to reject the ball club’s efforts to broker a meeting between the two.” (Boston Globe)

Why was Bill Belichick throwing a blocking pad at Tom Brady?: “The drill, which is commonplace in the early part of Patriots practices in position breakdowns, is designed to test a quarterback’s ability to feel the pass rush — and react to it — without looking at it. So in this case, the blocking pad was essentially a pass-rusher, and Brady had to react while keeping his eyes down the field at the coverage.” (ESPN)