Patriots Defense 'Back To Square One' After Loss
BOSTON (CBS) - Sunday's 25-17 loss to the Pittsburgh Steelers was an overall frustrating day for the New England Patriots.
No one was more frustrated than the Patriots defense.
"Very frustrating," said defensive lineman Vince Wilfork. "We talk about getting teams in second and longs, third and longs and taking advantage of those situations. We had them in those situations but we didn't take advantage of them."
"(It's a) team effort. You can't say it was the DBs you can't say it was up front. Collectively, we didn't do a good job as a defensively when it came down to it," said Wilfork.
The Patriots defense played bend don't break defense once again, allowing the Steelers to find the end zone in just two of five red zone trips, but gave them far too many chances. The Steelers went 10-for-16 on third downs, and held the ball for nearly 40-minutes in the win.
Read: Pats-Steelers Highs and Lows
"It was just unnecessary," lineman Andre Carter said of the Steelers third down success. "From a D-Line standpoint, we have to help our guys in the back field. Just overall in general, we have to discuss what needs to be done. Especially those third down, when it comes down to third and long those are important. You have to get off the field, there is just no excuse."
"You can't stop them on third down, you can't stop them," said safety Patrick Chung. "They came to play, now we have to watch film and see what we did wrong."
"Playing against a team like that, if you can't get off the field on third down, it's going to be a long day as you saw," Wilfork added. "You have to give them a lot of credit. They came up with a good game plan. They attacked us and they executed their game plan. We obviously didn't. We have to get back to the drawing board. There's a lot of football left to play. We have to take this one in stride and take it like a man.
"We win as a team, we lose as a team," said Wilfork.
Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger performed surgery against the New England D, completing 36 of his 50 passes for 365 yards and a pair of touchdowns. He hit nine different receivers, with both tight end Heath Miller and wide out Mike Wallace hauling in seven catches each.
"They just outplayed us," said corner Kyle Arrington. "They have speedy, explosive receivers, but we just run the game calls. It was just a bad day overall."
"It kind of feels like we're back to square one," said Carter, who may have been one of the loan bright spots on the defense with his second straight two-sack afternoon.
Read: Brady, Pats Offense Has 'Poor Level Of Execution'
With little faith in the defense, head coach Bill Belichick called an onside-kick after the Patriots made it a 22-17 game late in the fourth. The Patriots had all three timeouts remaining, but Stephen Gostkowski's kick failed to travel 10 yards and New England was flagged for being offsides.
Just another example of poor execution on the Patriots part on Sunday.
"It wasn't very good," Belichick said of the play. "We got called for off-sides, the ball didn't go 10 yards. It's obviously not what we were trying to do."
"We had confidence in the play," Belichick said. "We thought we would execute it well end give us a chance to get the ball. It obviously didn't work out."
"We had to do a better job in every area," said the Patriots coach. "Based on today, we need to play better offense, we need to play better defense, we need to play better special teams. We need to coach better, we need to play better. It just wasn't our best effort today. I'm not questioning the effort, it wasn't very good execution. We just couldn't get it done."
