BALTIMORE RAVENS POST-GAME QUOTES
Head Coach John Harbaugh
Opening Statement
OK. It was a good football game. It was obviously a tough game to lose. We're just getting ready to play the next game.
After an emotional loss, what was the message to the team?
That's in our locker room, so we'll just keep the message to us. That's all it needs to be.
Did you feel like you were trying everything to get stops in the fourth quarter?
Yes. We didn't leave anything on the play sheet. We played for stops.
Re: Leaving Antonio Brown with no safety help:
Well, you can't just play the whole game in the same coverage. You have to mix it up a bit. That's just the way the game gets played out.
What was the biggest defensive problem in stopping the Steelers?
There's never any one thing. It's always a battle. You try to stop them. They didn't exactly stop us either. That's just the way it is.
Re: A good offensive performance tonight:
We just ran the ball well. I thought Alex Collins and the offensive line did a great job in blocking and running the ball. We made some plays in the passing game with Mike [Wallace] and Jeremy [Maclin] making big plays for us. We executed. I thought they did a great job. It's good to see. We have a very good offense. Everybody quit writing about that, and let's go try to win the next game.
Do you feel good about the offensive momentum moving forward?
I don't have to feel good about that. I just feel good about going to play the next game with the guys we've got. But you guys are the ones that want to be feeling good about this or that and make all the judgements and evaluations. We don't do that. We don't have to feel good about it. We just have to go play. We just have to go get ready to play and compete and just try to put the best performance we can out there to try to win the next game. That's what we're going to put everything we have into. All the other questions are just noise and smoke.
Re: Confusion with the ball being fumbled out of bounds and there still being time left on the clock:
I don't even remember. At that point in time, were there eight seconds left? Did the game turn on that? I don't think so.
QB Joe Flacco
RE: Similarities this game and last year's December game.
Yeah it was a tough game, so it was definitely similar to us. It was a different game, but the same results.
RE: The recent improvement in performance for the offense.
It's tough to be happy right now, in this situation. I definitely thought we played well tonight, but we didn't win the game. We were not able to do it.
RE: Moving on from the game. It is what it is. I mean we still have, what is it, three left now. I think we're doing a good job at it, but we better get over it quickly. Moving forward we still have a lot left in front of us, and we have to go get it.
LB C.J. Mosley
How difficult is this one to swallow, given the long time you've had to stew over that Christmas game last year that came down in similar fashion?
Even though we knew we had a good run during the third quarter, in this rivalry, in this game, it will always come down to the end of the game. So the guys on defense, we were happy that the offense was clicking. They did a great job controlling the game. We knew at the end of it, it was going to be that kind of game. Unfortunately, even though we did get a stop, they got a field goal. We didn't get the result that we wanted. I think, being in this environment, on Sunday night, playing away, for a lot of guys, that's the closest thing they felt to a playoff game since we haven't been in one for a while. If anything, it should be a morale boost. We just need to make those minor adjustments so we can finish close games like that.
What were you seeing from their tight ends? It seemed like there was a lot of room for them underneath?
At the beginning of the game, they were going quick and going empty, so a lot of the passes were quick slants and quick routes. They were just, they were able to get those five, six yards because we were playing zone coverage. They've got good players and when they get guys in space, they can make plays, as you can see. The biggest thing, especially at the beginning of the game, they had a lot of short third downs, and I think they converted a lot of them. So that's kind of hard when you can stop the run, but you're giving them five, six [yards] on first and second down on the pass. It's kind of hard to get them off the field on third-and-short.
Did you feel that it was snowballing after a while and that it was hard to get a stop on defense?
No, I don't think so. They started out fast at the beginning of the game, going up 14-0. Give credit to our offense for fighting back, getting momentum and swinging back our way. We got things going. But, like I said, we didn't do it on third down. And those extended drives led to those field goals. Some other drives led to touchdowns. We just have to figure out the little things that they did. The last few games, teams might try to do the same thing. We just have to swallow this one, let it go and wait for the next three games. We're still in it. We just have to make sure that we handle our business so we can try to get back ultimately for the playoffs.
C Ryan Jensen
What made the running game work tonight?
It's just consistency and continuing to run the ball every day.
Can you pick up after a loss like this and win out the rest of the season?
Yes, definitely. That's all we can do. We have to go onto next week and try to go 1-0.
Have you gained more confidence in the offense tonight?
It was an offensive game for us. We didn't go in there and close it out though, so it kind of mars what we did today coming out of here with a loss. Getting down the stretch and getting hot at the right moment is good.
CB Marlon Humphrey
What can you take away from today after going head to head with Antonio Brown?
What I can take away is we just have to finish. I think defensively, we had some good plays. We had some big drives, but towards the end, when we needed it the most, we couldn't get off the field on third down. We gave them a late field goal to win the game.
RE: The last Steelers' drive.
I thought we started off pretty strong. I was thinking, 'two more stops, two more stops,' but then we gave up one. Then we tried to regroup, and it seemed like we would start off well, but then on those later downs we couldn't seem to get off the field. We will take a day off as we adjust moving forward, and then watch the film on Tuesday. Then we will get ready for our next opponent.
Re: Ben Rothlisberger's performance.
A lot of underneath routes and breaking routes. We gave up a few big plays, but Ben is a great quarterback. I feel like we left a lot of plays out there on the field. It seemed like they were doing the same thing over and over again, and we just happened to be in the wrong calls at the wrong times. Sometimes we made a couple bad decisions. I made a couple – let the ball get into the flat. I was out fought a few times. Overall, they were doing the same thing. We were just in the wrong situation at the wrong times.
S Eric Weddle
RE: On the outcome of the game.
If you would have told me that our offense would put up 38 points against them, I would have 100-percent said we would have won. It's just tough man. We didn't make the plays.
RE: The difficulty in beating Pittsburgh.
We just know that you can never take the gas pedal off when you are playing this team. We played outstanding in the third quarter. Going into the fourth, we made three or four stops in a row. Then they just get on these runs that we can't dig ourselves out of. It's little mistakes here and there – a guy not dropping in the right direction, driving the shallow route. Just multiple things that happen within the series that give up points, and you just can't do that against any team, let alone of the best quarterbacks to ever do it.
Is it tough coming off an emotional loss or is it easy to refocus?
This is going to sting for a while, especially for the guys on defense because we care so much. We hold ourselves to high standards. We have three games left. Two of them are at home. If we win out, we are going to go into the playoffs coming off a three-game winning streak, having won six out of seven. Hopefully this will just build our character and make us better in the long run.
