PITTSBURGH (93.7 The Fan) – Steelers safety Minkah Fitzpatrick said a couple of days after the playoff loss to Cleveland the mood during locker cleanout and exit interviews is ‘very down’.
“We had very high expectations for this team simply because we held ourselves to a high standard throughout the year,” Fitzpatrick said. “To go out like we did and not finish for the older guys who don’t have many years left or this may be their last one is very disappointing.”
“A loss like that is very hard to deal with and it does sting. We can hang low for a little bit, but still have to learn from it.”
So what happened, how could a team that was 11-0 fall so quickly?
“It was almost 100% mental,” Fitzpatrick said. “I don’t think there’s too many times where we just lost one-on-one coverage, maybe on one third down. I think it was more just leaving somebody wide open, which we don’t normally do. The times we do, we lose games for a reason.”
“Maybe not getting in your gap or not fitting the run the right way. I don’t think any of it was being out-physicalled. Maybe we could have done a better job tackling, but when the running back is 10 yards down the field its hard to tackle him.”
“I think it was overall execution.”
The drop-off during the second half of the season wasn’t as big defensively, but it was there. Allowing 28.6 points a game over the last six. The yardage allowed was similar but after getting 23 turnovers the first 11 games. The Steelers managed four turnovers the last six.
“We lacked execution overall,” Fitzpatrick said. “We lacked execution in the pass game, in the run game. Got away from what we are used to doing and that’s pretty much being simple and executing the game plan. Honestly that’s it for real. I think it was real simple the reason we lost football games. It wasn’t like we were getting outplayed or outsmarted or outhustled. It was just lack of execution on our part as players.”
Fitzpatrick did allow for the fact that injuries to key players-linebackers Devin Bush and Bud Dupree and others who missed a variety of games contributed to their struggles.
“We had people down, people that were hurt,” Fitzpatrick said. “People that didn’t have a lot of experience that were out there which attributes to a boil over affect.”
“I can’t really explain to you why exactly it all happened or what we can stop from making it happen. We just gotta go out there next year and make sure that execution, not just on the front end, but on the back end of the season is going to be an emphasis for sure.”