5 AFC Championship X-Factors for the Steelers and Patriots

3. Ben Roethlisberger

You can't exactly fault New England for this, but it's interesting nonetheless: the best quarterback the Patriots have faced this season, according to our Net Expected Points metric (NEP), was Andy Dalton. Among the 34 quarterbacks with 200 or more drop backs, his per drop back efficiency ranked 14th in the NFL.

A quick glimpse at the team's schedule shows that they played just three top-20 passers this year in Dalton, Russell Wilson, and Tyrod Taylor.

Ben Roethlisberger ranked seventh according to our efficiency metric this year.

The standard 2016 Roethlisberger will be the toughest test New England's seen this year. But the standard Roethlisberger usually doesn't show up on the road.

The league average Passing NEP per drop back rate this year was 0.12. In other words, a quarterback was adding roughly 0.12 expected points every time he dropped back to pass. Big Ben's, as noted, was seventh-best in football this season at 0.23.

That's skewed by his home numbers, though. At Heinz Field, the rate was 0.42, which is actually 0.05 points higher than likely MVP Matt Ryan's season-long average. On the road, it was -- wait for it -- 0.07.

In other words, road Ben this season has been a below-average NFL passer. If the Steelers have any sort of chance to win, he needs to be at least above average.