Opening Statement: On the injury front, Randy Starks has a knee issue. He'll get an MRI tomorrow. Then Andrew Hawkins and Taylor Gabriel were both diagnosed with concussions. Cleary, this was a disappointing result. The thing that's easy to accept at times is when they make a play and out execute you. When some of their yardage and things come as a result of us being undisciplined and making simple mistakes and mental errors, we have to get that tightened up across the board. We've talked about getting it right as a staff and getting it right as a team. There were some good things to pull from it. I thought Johnny Manziel did some good things. He stayed poised, had some good presence in the pocket and moved well. I think he improved greatly from the Thursday night game knowing where he had to be to make throws and not looking to get out of the pocket too soon. He made some good plays. Overall we can't be that one-dimensional. We have to be able to run the football. That's a challenge to everybody in the run game. We have to be better. Defensively, the secondary play was not anywhere near our standards. There were too many long balls. We did some good things in the run game. They didn't attempt to run it very often but I think one of the reasons was that we defended it well early. We forced them to be one-dimensional. They obviously made plays on us.
Can you anticipate making any changes to staff or scheme?
No. This time will give us a chance to evaluate it. We'll be in as a staff this week. The players will be off after Wednesday, but the staff will be in a little bit longer to evaluate everything from A to Z.
Did Ben Roethlisberger playing effect the game plan?
No, because I don't know if their plan would have been that much different if it had been Landry Jones the whole game. I don't think it affected us from a schematic standpoint.
Was Manziel throwing from the pocket a major point of emphasis during the week?
No, it was running the offense. It was trusting the read. When you say, 'trust the read,' it's implied that if the read is there, hit your plant and throw it. I thought he did a good job of understanding what they were in, knowing where the ball had to go and knowing if he had to move in the pocket to get the lane to throw it. I think he took a big step forward in that sense.
How do you account for all the plays the Steelers' wide receivers made? Was it lack of pass rush or was it coverage?
It was both. I thought we did some decent things rushing the passer. He was getting the snap and finding the receivers and getting it out. Our guys were winning at times, but the ball was out so quick. Looking at it at times and looking at the replay, it's frustrating when we're not executing the right technique and guys fall back on old habits and open up the gate. We need to be better at the line of scrimmage. If you win at the line of scrimmage and take advantage of the one rule that's in favor of the defense, then you have a chance to win down the field. When we're giving free access from a press alignment, those are the things that are going to happen.
Why was Justin Gilbert inactive today?
It was a situation with Gaines. We wanted to get Charles Gaines some work. From a returner standpoint, we felt comfortable with Duke Johnson Jr. and Marlon Moore that we had those bases covered. Again, we wanted to come up with our position minimums and then back-fill it with special teams.
Re: Jimmy Haslam making no changes during the bye week:
I had a good meeting with Jimmy just the other day. We discussed a lot of things including what's been going well and what hasn't been going well. We discussed what the plan is moving forward. Where we are right now isn't good enough. We're challenged as a staff to do a little soul searching, come up with some answers and make sure when we come out of this break, we're ready to go and ready to snap this streak.
