From cheating claims to trash talking St

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The   and have met 29 times, and Pittsburgh holds a 15-14 series edge. Knowing that and nothing else, it would be reasonable to think that Sunday's AFC Championship Game would be an even matchup. That all changes when you hear the punchline: Since took over as the starter early in the 2001 season, the Patriots are 9-3 in head-to-head meetings with the Steelers, including 2-0 in the playoffs. NFL Playoffs    And just as evenly matched rivalries can heighten the bad blood, so too can lopsided affairs, when one team owns the other. And that "big brother always beats up little brother" dynamic is pretty much what we have here. The Steelers, for all the succe s, all the AFC North dominance and all the Lombardi Trophies Christian Wood Jersey , are perpetually looking up to the Patriots, who have been the closest thing to a dynasty we've seen this century.   The thing is, the Steelers, at least statistically, aren't far behind (via STATs): Steelers vs. Patriots: 2001-2016 Regular season wins: NE 196 (1st), PIT 166 (T-2nd) Playoff wins: NE 23 (1st), PIT 15 (2nd)  appearances: NE 6 (1st), PIT 3 (T-2nd) Super Bowl wins: NE 4 (1st), PIT 2 (2-2nd)   In reality, however, Pittsburgh seems like a world away. Depending on who you ask, there are various explanations for that reality. Wherever you come down on the conspiracy theories, the Steelers could change all that with a win on Sunday. But we've already written about    ; below we take a look at the partial, sometimes-sordid history between these two teams that brings us to this point.  AFC Championship GameFinal score: Patriots 24, Steelers 17   The Steelers were the the AFC's No. 1 seed and Brady was in his first year as the Patriots Thanasis Antetokounmpo Jersey ' starter. On paper, this was a mismatch -- Vegas had Pittsburgh as a 10-point favorite -- but New England led 21-3 midway through the third quarter and went on to win 24-17. And while upsets happen, the Spygate revelations in 2007 revealed a pattern of skirting the rules in the years before that.   From the Sept. 2015    :    ... Inside a room acce sible only to Belichick and a few others, they found a library of scouting material containing videotapes of opponents' signals, with detailed notes matching signals to plays for many teams going back seven seasons. Among them were handwritten diagrams of the defensive signals of the Pittsburgh Steelers, including the notes used in the January 2002 AFC Championship Game won by the Patriots 24-17.    "Oh, they knew," former Steelers wide receiver Hines Ward said of the Patriots    . "They were calling our stuff out. They knew, especially that first championship game here at Heinz Field in 2002 . They knew a lot of our calls. There's no question some of their players were calling out some of our stuff."AFC Championship Game, The RematchFinal score: Patriots 41, Steelers 27   The Steelers finished the regular season with a 15-1 record, thanks to a stout running game, a suffocating defense and the emergence of rookie   . In fact, three months earlier, Pittsburgh make quick work of New England, cruising to a 30-14 victory at Heinz Field that some thought signaled an end to the Patriots' dominance.     But in the AFC Championship Game rematch, the Steelers looked out of sorts early -- Big Ben had three interceptions including a pick-six. The Patriots led 24-3 at the half before sashaying to a 41-27 win. When Spygate came to light two years later, it inevitably led to questions about what the Patriots did (or didn't do) or knew (or didn't know) during the '05 conference championship game.The Steelers gave up a 60-yard touchdown pa s in the game, and it's one of the plays some former players point to as evidence the Patriots may have been tipped off because it was the Bobby Portis Jersey  perfect play call for the Steelers' defensive coverage."They knew which blitzes were coming," former defensive tackle Chris Hoke told the days after the "Outside the Lines" report was published. "They knew how to call plays that would best beat a coverage we were in. I can remember walking off the field that day saying 'What just happened?'"     "I have two observations from the 2004 game," former Steelers center Jeff Hartings told the    . "At the beginning of the game, in the first quarter or at halftime, I can remember thinking it seems like they made remarkable adjustments from the regular-season game. I just considered it great scouting, great coaching, great execution. Maybe there was something more to it.   "The other observation I have from that game is walking off the field and knowing everyone made mistakes in that game except for Tom Brady. He played the perfect game. He knew exactly what we were doing. If you rewatch that game, he knew exactly when we were blitzing."   Then there's this, from the    , which was published Oct. 12, 2014.       Bryan O'Leary Vin Baker Jersey , author of the book "Spygate: The Untold Story," repeats a rumor that Pats backup quarterback Doug Flutie once said he accidentally picked up Brady's helmet during the 2005 season.    "He was amazed that the coaches kept right on speaking to Brady past the 15-second cutoff, right up until the snap," according to O'Leary.    "The voice in Tom Brady's helmet was explaining the exact defense he was about to face."    That same year, Pats linebacker Ted Johnson told that an hour before game time, a list of the opposing team's audibles -- the signals a QB would use at the line of scrimmage just before a snap to change the play -- would sometimes appear in his locker. He had no idea where the lists came from. Three years later, he said he was as surprised as anyone to hear about the cheating allegations.   The Patriots wasted little time refuting the "Outside the Lines" report,   :  "The New England Patriots have never filmed or recorded another team's practice or walkthrough The first time we ever heard of such an accusation came in 2008, the day before Super Bowl XLII, when the   reported an allegation from a disgruntled former employee. That report created a media firestorm that extended globally and was discu sed ince santly for months. It took four months before that newspaper retracted its story and offered the team a front and back page apology for the damage done. Clearly, the damage has been irreparable. As recently as August 2015 , over seven years after the retraction and apology was i sued, ESPN i sued the following apology to the Patriots for continuing to perpetuate the myth. ...  "This type of reporting over the past seven years has led to additional unfounded, unwarranted and, quite frankly, unbelievable allegations by former players, coaches and executives. None of which have ever been substantiated, but many of which continue to be propagated. ... For the past 16 years, the Patriots have been led by one of  Bryn Forbes Jersey the league's all-time greatest coache