The Tampa Bay Buccaneers got a cold shower from the Pittsburgh Steelers in week six. Quarterback Tom Brady, in particular, endured a frustrating game and performed completely out of sorts, as his longtime rival Ben Roethlisberger criticized.

Munich / Pittsburgh – The Tampa Bay Buccaneers surprisingly lost 18:20 at the Pittsburgh Steelers and had to face numerous questions after the frustrating performance.

First and foremost superstar Tom Brady. In addition to the defeat, the statistics of “TB12” were anything but rosy on this evening.

The seven-time Super Bowl champion completed less than 50 per cent of his throws in the first half and only 62.5 per cent of his passes in the entire game. 25 of 40 successful passes for a meagre 243 passing yards and one touchdown were no mean feat.

The Steelers’ pass rush also got through to the quarterback several times and recorded five quarterback hits in addition to two sacks. The numerous hits seemed to have a lasting effect on the star quarterback.

Roethlisberger: Brady “looked like a different Tom” against Steelers

Brady put in a poor performance against the Steelers and looked nowhere near as confident as usual. Totally unfamiliar, as even a long-time competitor of Brady’s noted.

“Tom is the greatest. The Super Bowl rings show that,” longtime Brady rival and one-time Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger said on his “Footbahlin” podcast. But “it looked like he didn’t want to be out there. Maybe it was the pressure and him getting hit and whatever else was going on.”

“There’s no way he was enjoying it,” “Big Ben” recalled his thoughts during the game, “Never. It just didn’t look like fun to him.”

While Brady was clearly unhappy with himself and the Buccaneers’ offense, Roethlisberger believes the play of the Steelers defence had a lot to do with Brady’s displeasure. Although Pittsburgh’s secondary was without several key regulars, it frustrated Brady and held his highly talented receivers in check.

“When a defense is coming after you, sometimes anger and resentment of things arise because of the other team’s impact on you,” Roethlisberger said. “Not because it’s you. But yeah, it looked like another Tom. “

Tampa Bay Buccaneers: Brady takes team to task

Brady said on his “Let’s Go!” podcast that the lack of scoring is the main reason Tampa Bay is at a 3-3 record after six games. The lack of assertiveness, he said, has led to unforced errors, too many punts and a lack of success at critical moments.

Brady’s incomplete pass to wide receiver Chris Godwin as the Buccaneers tried to stave off defeat is a case in point. Pittsburgh stopped the attempt and kept the ball for the remaining 4 minutes and 38 seconds of the game.

“I think there’s a lot of root cause analysis to do,” Brady said of his team. “You’ve got to make the right changes, improve in the areas where you can win and hopefully learn from the losses. “