Cowboys 20, Steelers 17
MIKE TOMLIN: I just told the team, there's a fine line between drinking wine and squashing grapes in our business, and that's an example of it. That ball was on the ground right there in the red area, and that's the difference.
I want to congratulate Dallas, man. I'm going to compliment our guys on their efforts. It was a hard-fought game tonight, but it's nothing mystical about the outcome.
I just thought we didn't do enough over 60 minutes to position ourselves specifically. I thought we started slow offensively, and I thought it was self-inflicted wounds, penalties, and things of that nature to get us off schedule.
I didn't think we were as connected as we should have been defensively and some moments in the first half didn't necessarily manifest itself in terms of points, but it was some field positional, flipping like chunks and things of that nature.
I thought we settled down and cleaned some of that up over the second half, but obviously when you are playing a good team, and particularly a guy like Dak Prescott, man, you are in tight ball games, he ends up with the ball last, you got a chance to lose. That's really just a synopsis of what transpired.
Had some injuries in play. Nick Herbig got a hamstring. DeMarvin Leal had a neck injury of some kind and is being evaluated. Don't have a lot of information on that. That's where it is.
I'll pause and open it up for questions.
Q. Mike, what kept your offense from being able to turn those turnovers and stops into points in sustaining those drives?
MIKE TOMLIN: You know, some of it was lack of execution by us. Some of it was top-quality execution by them. We own it. We've got to be better.
You are plus three in some of those instances. Man, it shouldn't come down to that. We didn't do a lot of things well enough to secure a victory, no doubt.
Q. Why the struggles for a second week on third down on defense?
MIKE TOMLIN: I just thought early on I didn't think that we were connected enough from a communications standpoint. They paced us a little bit, but a lot of that's got to do with Dak. He's a veteran guy. He's good in those moments.
Q. George Pickens wasn't one of your higher snap players. There was a whole series when he was on the bench in the second half. What went into that?
MIKE TOMLIN: We just wanted to minimize his reps in an effort to get more productivity. We just trying to rep manage in terms of the totality of the big picture.
He wasn't less of a focal point in terms of our intentions of what we wanted to do offensively, but we did want to cut his reps a little bit in an effort to get higher quality play just in general.
Q. Was he not playing up to the quality that you wanted from him?
MIKE TOMLIN: It's no different than we minimize some of the snaps of D-lineman like Cam Heyward. It's just about snap management. There's no underlying story, to be quite honest with you.
Q. It seemed like Beanie he was getting targeted by Dak throughout the game. What did you see from his performance tonight?
MIKE TOMLIN: I think we all know that Beanie is going to get targeted, and I think Beanie knows that he is going to get targeted. He is a young guy in the huddle. Such is life in the NFL as a defensive back.
Q. Plans to run the ball, what do you feel like they were able to do to get on track against you guys?
MIKE TOMLIN: As he mentioned, we had to allocate a certain number of people in the passing game, and so that's the cat-and-mouse, strategic component of play that kind of goes down in good, close football games.
Q. What's your mindset about taking the last time-out on defense there?
MIKE TOMLIN: You know, just trying to win the game, man. Wanted to gather some information, see the structure they came out in, get ourselves in the right call. It was a fourth down play.
No hesitation about that. We had an opportunity to win that game right there. Forget what comes after. So we took a time-out. We communicated. We got in a call that we liked, and they won the down.
Q. In general were you thinking when it gets under a certain amount of time on the clock, you are much more likely to win the game on defense than you would be no matter time-outs you had saved for offense?
MIKE TOMLIN: It was a fourth down play. The game was right there.
FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports