PITTSBURGH (93.7 The Fan) – There is no sure-coating this one. No phrase like missing their mojo to tell the media. It was a butt-kicking on both side of the ball against a team coming off three wins last year that was dealing with a number of injuries.
“It was embarrassing to say the least,” said Steelers linebacker Alex Highsmith. “We just didn’t get it done. You hate this feeling. We can only look at us. It’s the man in the mirror. It’s unacceptable what happened today.”
“We just got to play better,” said corner Patrick Peterson. “Like Coach always says it’s not mystical, we just have to continue looking at ourselves in the mirror and find ways to get better. It’s as simple as that. We have to get better on first down, situational ball and there on.”
“We just really got to be better,” in an almost identical response from linebacker Elandon Roberts. “We knew what they were going to come in and do. We have to be better. It starts with watching film and getting better. Lucky it’s early in the season so we have opportunities to fix it, but it’s a collective. It’s all 11.”
That just the thoughts of a few of the defensive players.
“We have these spurts where we look good,” said center Mason Cole. “We are not doing it soon enough in games. We are not functioning efficiently. I think we are waiting on splash plays and when we don’t get them we are not converting third downs. It’s inefficient, bad ball.”
Often their most outspoken, or maybe better said honest, player when struggling, Cole said they would start to run it well and then one bad or negative run and it would ‘scare us away from it’.
Now all of a sudden, they are playing catchup, you’re in bad situations. He would add the inconsistency is killing them.
Not only did they lose Kenny Pickett to injury, but tight end Pat Freiermuth and starting left tackle Dan Moore. That gave Broderick Jones his first meaningful NFL action and not knowing Moore’s status could be the beginning of his career. It’s been awhile since he’s lost two games in a season coming from Georgia and he wants to turn this around.
“It’s adding fuel on the fire for me to enhance and get better at a rapid pace,” Jones said.
“We got to let this one sting a little bit,” said receiver Calvin Austin. “This was a big one. In the League this is what it’s all about, it’s all about shaking back and getting ready for the next one. It’s alright for this one to hurt and remember because I don’t want this feeling again because this ain’t a good feeling getting beat like this on the road. We are going to remember this one and get back to work and work to not have this feeling anymore.”
“You got to correct this,” Roberts said. “I don’t think there is any loss you can shower off. You gotta correct this. The thing about it is that it’s early in the season. Come Monday we have to look all 11 in the eye. We got to watch this film and really look at it, take the coaching and get it done.”
“We know we wanted to be 3-1 and instead of 2-2, but here we are,” Highsmith said. “How are we going to bounce back?”
“It’s just not the standard and we got to live up to that and it starts next week. It’s in all phases of the game.
It starts with stopping the run and eliminating the big plays.”
Highsmith added they are not being physical enough, not getting off our blocks hard enough, not being sound defensively enough. He said they have to come out every single day at practice with a sense of urgency.
“It starts with stopping the run, we obviously can’t do that right now,” Highsmith added. “We got to take a huge step in that next week.”
“There hasn’t been panic,” Cole said.
“We know how good we can be. For whatever reason we are starting slow. We are not functioning efficiently. We are not doing it consistently well enough. We have spurts in the second half where we are running the ball really well, moving the ball down the field and stall in the red zone. Just not good enough.”
Filling in at starting guard, Nate Herbig blamed himself for the loss. TJ Watt said he wasn’t good enough and that he was part of the problem on Sunday. A likely Hall of Famer in the future, Patrick Peterson asks the fan base to remain with them.
“Just stick with us, hold on,” Peterson said. “The first quarter of the season is over, we got three more quarters of ball to go. We’ll see where we land after that.”