Here’s what Mike Vrabel had to say following Sunday’s loss to the Steelers:
On this being a lesson learned with the turnovers:
“Yeah, obviously. No, we’ve known we don’t need to learn a lesson. We don’t need to learn a football game to know that turnovers are very hard to overcome. They erase all the good things that you do. They take away momentum, they take away points, give them field position. We didn’t need to turn it over as many times as we did to learn a lesson. We knew that before, so it was very unfortunate.”
On to what he attributes the turnovers penalty –
“The penalties, we cleaned them up, but the penalties … They called a couple of defensive holds they called on them. You’d have to tell me that that penalty on Carlton Davis is actually defensive pass interference. That’s new for me. And again, I think that the turnovers are much more critical than the penalties, much more critical.”
“Ball security comes down to technique. It comes down to other people protecting the guy with the ball, second guy in. Those are all things that we continue to talk about, have talked about, and will talk about, and decision-making. Decision making when you have the football in your hand, whether that’s a quarterback, whether that’s a player that’s reaching it, and it gets knocked out. So, we’ll watch the tape, and we’ll clearly address the ball security. We got to move on, fix it and move on.”
On if he felt like this is a game where they beat themselves and put themselves in a position to win, but the turnovers obviously did away with that:
“I’m not going to state the obvious. We just have to not give them so many chances with turnovers, take care of those things. There’s a lot to clean up, a lot. A lot of good in there, but unfortunately, just not enough to get us the win, to get us to really have any advantage in the football game. Every time I felt like we were going to take the momentum and be able to score and move forward in the game. The defense did a great job there. Unfortunately, they just got to be one too many opportunities on their part.”
On a quick postgame feeling about Drake and what he saw today:
“A lot of good. Unfortunately, some decisions that have to be better. I’m sure we’ll have to protect them better. Just understanding that you don’t have to win it all in one play. There’s opportunities to move on and save the day the next play. You just can’t put the ball in harm’s way at that position. But certainly, Drake wasn’t alone. But there’s a lot of really good things in there. His ability to extend plays, scramble, pick up first downs for us, running multiple plays inside the pocket, outside the pocket. So there’s a lot of good things in there, and just some decision making that we need to be better for us and for himself.”
On the sequence at the end of the second quarter when they were getting close, and what was it about the Steelers’ defense that made throwing the ball three straight times the right call:
“Yeah, just loaded up. Just loaded up and really just gapping you out, going with bigger personnel. And again, we like some of them. We like some of the plays, and when they don’t work, we don’t execute them, certainly always room for second guessing. So whether we run it in or throw it in, we have to execute and make great decisions. And we didn’t. But that was something that we felt good about those plays. We just, again, weren’t able to execute. Probably we were able to slip a run in there on a fourth down. We had timeouts, some opportunities to call it based on the look, and then let the quarterback make a decision. So some of those are two-way calls that go in when you’re down there and trying to just get the best play.”
On what he saw on that final fourth down conversion that was only to not work out today:
“It looked like they pressured us, and Drake got the ball out. And again, probably have to just drop step and be able to knife. We don’t know those are going to be bang, bang plays, and try to split them and get the first down. It’s hard to circle around some defenders. I didn’t have the best view of it. So I would say that the decision that Pop made wasn’t the right one there just because we didn’t get it. Got to try to either drop step or make him miss.”
On when they went for fourth down deep in their own territory at one point and if he was chasing momentum at that point, and if he felt this was a game that your team needed that to get going, given the way it was going:
“I just want to be aggressive, want to be decisive and aggressive and give these guys opportunities to win the game. Felt like those were good calls for us. The players executed it, and we just weren’t able to score off of some of them.”
On the turnovers erasing the good things they did, they went down 14-0, but what his thoughts were on the defense the rest of the game:
“Resilient. I mean, we got to be better in the red zone when they do get there. I think they settled down, really played the type of defense that we expect, except for the last drive there. So again, you got to go wherever to put the ball down. You just keep reminding them to go play defense. And they did, and they got stops, and there was energy, and we just got to keep trying to turn the ball over. You see how critical that is when we can do that and find an opportunity to get it out of the quarterback’s hand or when they do fumbe it, try to keep it in bounds or recover it. It was close … game of inches. We weren’t able to recover the fumble, and they were. Had plenty of chances.”
On how does he handle Ramondre Stevenson with two fumbles:
“It’s like you sit there and we’re so excited about him, and everybody’s excited about him, the fans are, and we know what his capabilities are. We got to get him back. We need him. We absolutely need him. You see what he was able to do for us last week, his ability to make some plays. Again, we’ll just have to look at the technique. We’ll have to look at the ball security, but we’re going to need him. We need his ability, but we also need to take care of the football. It’s a long answer to tell you that I’m not really sure 20 minutes after the game what we’re going to do. But we need him because he helped us win the game last week, and it was a different story today.”
On the fact they left points on the field but were also able to put together some long drives, and how does he think this could help them to build his team’s identity offensively:
“Yeah, I appreciate that question. I do. We have to score. You have to score in this league. You have to… Again, I’m great with the long drives. We’re going to have to continue to use that and gain confidence, but we’re going to have to find ways to create explosive plays. It’s hard to drive the ball, 19 plays. Impressive that we can do that. But it’s also a reminder that you have to hit some X plays, and you have to continue to score touchdowns when you get down there after 19 plays. And I appreciate that.”
(EDITOR’S NOTE: This transcript was done based on the available footage and is subject to typographical errors. If you spot anything, please let me know in the comments below.)
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Ian Logue is a Seacoast native and owner and senior writer for PatsFans.com, an independent media site covering the New England Patriots and has been running this site in one form or another since 1997.
