The are back where they belong: Above the and on top of the entire AFC. How they got there was anything but ordinary. It was, however, typical -- typical of the Patriots to pull out a win that only they could po sibly see through. Overcome an eight-point fourth-quarter deficit? Check. Barely generate a timely defensive stop? Check. Score a late touchdown to take the lead? Check. Pick off a goal-line slant in the final seconds to seal the win? Check. Break the Steelers' hearts? Always.In the game of the season on Sunday, the Patriots went into Pittsburgh and handed the Steelers a crushing, devastating, and heartbreaking 27- Tony Carr Jersey 24 defeat. threw for 281 yards and two touchdowns. racked up 165 total yards. The Steelers actually managed to intercept for They held the ball for over 35 minutes.But they lost. They lost because they couldn't engineer a put-away drive after they took an eight-point lead late in the third quarter. They lost because they gave up 11 points in the final four minutes. They lost because the officials overturned what appeared to be a certain game-winning touchdown via Roethlisberger and . They lost because Roethlisberger threw an interception in the end zone on a fake-spike play instead of killing the clock and setting up for a chip-shot, game-tying field goal, which would've sent the game to overtime. PICKED! NFL (@NFL) As a result, the Patriots are now the top seed in the AFC. They own the head-to-head tiebreaker over the Steelers. So Kira Lewis Jr. Jersey if they win their final two games of the season, they'll enter the playoffs with home-field advantage. The Empire is back. The Empire remains strong. The Empire is more than happy to welcome the Steelers to Foxboro in January with a trip to the Super Bowl at stake. The rest of the AFC playoff field, including the Steelers of course, should not be happy. For a while, it really did look like the Steelers would end the Patriots' reign. But it all fell apart in the final minutes. After the Patriots kicked a field goal to trim the Steelers' lead to five points with four minutes to go, the Steelers needed to piece together a put-away drive. Instead, they went three-and-out, coming up a yard short of the first-down marker and punting the ball back to Brady. As we all know by now, giving the ball to Brady when you're clinging onto a one-score lead is football suicide.Five plays later -- after went all Gronk all over the Steelers' secondary -- plunged into the end zone to give the Patriots a one-point lead. A fade to Gronk to secure the two-point conversion handed the Patriots a three-point lead with under a minute remaining. TB12& .& . TD + 2 pt conversion + the LEAD. NFL (@NFL) But the Steelers struck back. turned a short pa s into a 69-yard gain. JUJU! NFL (@NFL) On the next play, Roethlisberger found James for what appeared to be a go-ahead touchdown. But the officials reviewed the play and found that James did not complete the proce s of the catch. As he went to the ground and stretched the ball over the goal line, the ball contacted the gra s and shifted in his hands. The overturned TD Steelers Depot (@Steelersdepot) Incomplete. You can hate the rule, but you can't blame the officials for correctly enforcing the rule. People are saying a runner breaking the plane causes the ball to become deadwhich is true. BUT the receiver does not become a runner until he completes the proce s of the catch. TOTALLY DIFFERENT Mike Pereira (@MikePereira) But Jrue Holiday Jersey the Steelers were still well off. They needed only a field goal to tie the game and they still had a couple chances to breach the end zone. On the next play, Roethlisberger threw short of the goal line and was tackled in bounds. The clock ticked. The Steelers were out of timeouts. It looked like Big Ben would spike the ball to stop the clock, but he pulled off the fake spike instead. And then he threw the pick to that ended the game and handed the Patriots control over the AFC.The path to the Super Bowl will likely go through New England. Read on for seven takeaways. 1. Gronk carries the Patriots The Patriots didn't just win because of the always controversial and confusing catch rule. They didn't just E'Twaun Moore Jersey win because of that late interception. They won because they have the most unstoppable playmaker in football: Rob Gronkowski. Gronk, who mi sed last week's lo s to the due to a suspension, powered the Patriots to victory. The Steelers rightly changed their typical ineffective defensive strategy to play more man-coverage and le s zone, and it worked for the most part. The one player they couldn't contain was Gronk, who ran straight through tight coverage and blasted the Steelers over and over again. He finished with 168 yards on nine catches. On the Patriots' game-winning drive, he caught three pa ses for 69 yards -- and that's not even including his two-point conversion. GRONK LAUGHED AT HIM LMAOOOOO Steve Noah (@Steve_OS) Gronk forever. 2. Tom Brady bolsters his MVP case Barring something strange happening in the final two weeks, Brady is your 2017 NFL MVP at the age of 40. On Sunday, he strengthened his MVP case by completing 22 of 35 pa ses for 298 yards, one touchdown, one pick, and an 87.6 pa ser rating. Brady faced more pre sure than he's used to and his interception certainly deflated the Patriots considering it led to a Steelers' touchdown. His stat line wasn't overly impre sive.But he also made the kind of throws that only Tom freakin' Brady can make. TB12 TD. NFL (@NFL) The placement on this TB12 pa s... Also. Gronk. NFL (@NFL) TB12 + NFL (@NFL) After lost his season to a torn ACL, and were seen as Brady's only challengers. Well, Wilson suffered a second straight dismal outing and Brown suffered a serious injury in the early going on Sunday. The MVP belongs to Brady barring a catastrophic final two weeks. 3. Antonio Brown's injury Once again, we were robbed of an opportunity to watch the Steelers at full strength. In the first half, Brown suffered a lower leg injury that knocked him out of the game. He ended up heading back to the locker room. The Steelers said he suffered a calf injury and called him questionable to return. But at halftime, Mike Tomlin revealed that Brown likely wasn't going to return. And then the team announced that he was heading to the hospital. The long-term implications of Brown's Derrick Favors Jersey injury matters more than what happened on Sunday, but let's just note how incredibly unlucky the Steelers have been when it comes to their health against the Patriots. For once, it'd be great if we could see these two teams play each other at full strength. Steelers will be without one of their Big Three for 4th straight game vs. Patriots:2015 opener -- Bell suspended2016 Week 7 -- Roethlisberger DNP2016 AFC title game -- Bell left early w/ groin injury2017 Week 15 -- Brown left w/ leg injury Kevin Duffy (@KevinRDuffy) Brown entere