FOXBOROUGH – Well, how good are the Pittsburgh Steelers?We know they’re good enough to be 9-3 and second, behind the Tennessee Titans, in the American Football Conference.We know they beat the New England Patriots yesterday, 33-10. And if you saw the score, you’d have to conclude that the Steelers are pretty darn good.But the truth is, you’d never know it from this game. It isn’t that the Steelers played badly ? they didn’t. But at the same time, you couldn’t truly say the Steelers came out and blew the Patriots off the field, because they didn’t do that, either.Truth is, the Steelers didn’t do anything that would lead you to conclude anything about them one way or the other, because the Patriots gave them the game.More than that, I could make a pretty good case that the Steelers might have lost this game had the Patriots not been so eager to give it away. Consider: Pittsburgh benefited from five turnovers in the second half and scored only two touchdowns. Out of a possible 35 gift-wrapped points, the Steelers came away with 20. The Patriots hang onto the ball in the second half, and it’s quite possible they win this and I’m writing about what frauds the Steelers are.But even the Steelers couldn’t blow this one. They could have left the field in the middle of the third quarter with the 13-10 lead they got after Jeff Reed’s field goal ? and still won the game.There have been sloppy games in the history of the National Football League. And there have been some pretty serious avalanches in the history of winter weather. But it’s doubtful that the two unlikely scenarios have ever been juxtaposed as neatly as they were yesterday.An avalanche starts when the snow shifts on the side of a mountain, and that’s pretty much what happened when Matthew Slater fumbled the kickoff that followed Reed’s field goal.There was no reason for it. He couldn’t blame the sun, as it was dark by then. He didn’t have anyone bearing down on him. He just dropped it (actually, it bounced off his chest).The Steelers converted that one into a touchdown, but after that it was like nobody wanted to win. Dropped passes ? missed chances ? the Patriots tried mightily to give it away ? and the Steelers tried just as mightily not to accept.The Patriots turned the ball over three more times, setting up the Steelers for easy touchdown drives all three times. The result? Field goal, missed field goal, field goal.That’s what would make losing this game so maddening to me, were I a New England Patriot. By all rights, the Steelers should have been on the bus heading to the airport by the middle of the fourth quarter, and instead the Patriots were two touchdowns, and two two-point conversions, away from tying it ? and with a decent amount of time left to do so, too.This isn’t to say they were going to, because the way the Patriots were playing, the East Lynn C Squad kids were probably wishing it was them they were going to face next week in Florida.Sure enough, the Patriots made sure they gave the Steelers one more touchdown, and this time the Steelers accepted. Cassel got picked off by Lawrence Timmons, who ran it all the way to the one (ironically, Benjamin Watson, whose entire career has been defined by running down Champ Bailey in Denver after a similar pick three years ago, ran Timmons down).One can only hope now that the Steelers have read up on their Emily Post. Because coach Mike Tomlin should assign each Steeler a corresponding Patriot, buy them all some nice stationery, and order them to write thank-you notes.Christmas came early for all of them.Steve Krause is sports editor of The Item.