All day and into the night, they did all the right things. Minimal mental stupidity. Great resilience. Mostly outstanding execution. Unforced physical errors at a minimum.
For 59 minutes and 26 seconds they were on it. They had the Patriots where they wanted them. The elephant in the room? The Steelers had embraced it. There were fireworks. The kitchen was lit. Every other metaphor Mike Tomlin had used to whip up his team and fanbase worked.
Then they short-circuited and kicked it away in the final 34 seconds.
First, they burned a timeout at the end of the Juju Smith-Schuster catch-and-run that put the ball at the 10.