Steelers vs Patriots AFC Championship Gets a Star Wars Makeover

Make no mistake about it: the New England Patriots are an Empire of a football team. In the NFL, the Pats, under QB Tom Brady and coach Bill Belichick have been dominant, with the rest of the team rotating around them, and still finding ways to win on a near-constant basis. Whether they’re an evil empire is up to fan interpretation, though they have a reputation sometimes for winning while bending the rules (again, whether it’s earned or not is probably the position of any individual fan. Nothing to get deflated about).

If there’s a team that has been able to even slightly challenge their legacy of consistency in the AFC, it’s the Pittsburgh Steelers, and now the Steel City is going up against Beantown in the AFC Championship once again. Hometown newspaper Pittsburgh Post-Gazette has positioned the game as a battle for the ages – if those ages are a long time ago. On their special Sunday Playoff Xtra edition, they depict the Patriots as “The Evil Empire,” set up inside a football-shaped Death Star. The Steelers, meanwhile, are making their approach for a trench run, with a Steelers-logo-emblazened Millennium Falcon leading the charge. Assistant Managing Editor Michael Sanserino shared the cover on twitter.

Of course, they did miss one opportunity: with the nickname for their stars, Ben, Bell, and Brown (and last game, Boswell) being the “Killer Bs,” you’d think we could’ve seen a B-wing in the bunch, but that’s a little nerdier than this graphic designer was probably thinking.

This comes when the Death Star is at the forefront of fans’ minds, with Rogue One: A Star Wars Story sitting at the top of the 2016 releases in box office, and fast approaching a billion dollars worldwide. It may also be a prediction from the Post-Gazette that this particular battle will be fought “in the trenches,” between offensive and defensive lines.

The AFC Championship game is this Sunday, January 22 at 6:40 p.m. ET.

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