Patriots dominate, or was that the Steelers defense being exposed?

Let’s start with the roll call of credit for the New England Patriots on Thursday night.

Tom Brady was great again, completing 19 passes in a row at one point. He finished 25-of-32 for 288 yards and four touchdowns. Rob Gronkowski was super yet again, scoring three touchdowns, but that’s no huge surprise because he’s the most dominant tight end ever. Julian Edelman was typically good, Dion Lewis made a lot of plays as the Patriots’ scrap heap running back of the hour, and the defending champions looked fearsome in their 28-21 season-opening victory at Gillette Stadium. The game looked a lot closer at the end because of a last-second touchdown by Pittsburgh.

Got all that? Enough credit to the victors? Cool. Now let’s talk about the team that played the patsy in the Patriots’ second victory parade, because there has to be a lot of concern there.

The Pittsburgh Steelers have been known for defense for decades, but they won’t be this year. Anything the Patriots wanted to do, they did. Everything looked easy, in part because the Steelers didn’t do much to make it hard. They didn’t cover Gronkowski on the first of his three touchdowns. Seriously. Gronkowski just wandered out to line up and nobody followed him. Brady just hurried up the snap and got it out to him quickly. The Steelers lined up with 10 men on one play in their red zone later on. In the fourth quarter, after the Steelers’ offense made a game of it, they didn’t cover Gronkowski again off the line (yes, seriously) and Gronk had a 52-yard catch down the seam. That led to the touchdown that clinched it. This offseason the Steelers parted ways with longtime coordinator Dick LeBeau, and new coordinator Keith Butler did not have a good first game.

The secondary, which everyone knew might be an issue, looked bad. The front seven didn’t get much pass rush and when the Patriots did run, Lewis in particular made them miss a bunch of tackles.

It’s not fair to judge the Steelers off one game, especially this one. It’s really hard to play in New England, it’s really, really hard to play in New England when they’re celebrating a Super Bowl title and it’s about impossible when they were riding the wave of the deflate-gate victory in federal court. That was a hornet’s nest the Steelers stepped into on Thursday night.

Still, is the defense really good enough to win the AFC North or be a Super Bowl contender? It didn’t look that way. The offense moved the ball easily, though a couple missed field goals by Josh Scobee didn’t help. DeAngelo Williams looked reborn as he replaced suspended Le’Veon Bell, Ben Roethlisberger kept the team in the game and Antonio Brown was great once again. The Steelers had more than 400 yards. No problem there.

But the defense didn’t do its job. The Steelers won’t face many quarterbacks like Brady and they’ll definitely not face another tight end like Gronkowski, so maybe it was just a tough matchup. But for one night this looked very little like any of the tough, hard-nosed Steelers teams we’re used to seeing.

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Frank Schwab is the editor of Shutdown Corner on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter! Follow @YahooSchwab