Pittsburgh Steelers Media Conference

Monday, October 21, 2024

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA

Aaron Rodgers

Visitors Postgame Press Conference


Steelers 37, Jets 15

Q. Aaron, at 15-6 when you guys are driving there, what happened on that pick there? What did you see there?

AARON RODGERS: Yeah, just it was a bad throw. I should have just dumped that. That play for whatever reason just changed the entire energy; changed the game.

Q. Aaron, how do you -- I guess it's a little bit of a big picture, but I can't imagine you imagined starting the season 2-5. You hear that record knowing the players that are in that locker room, what goes through your mind? How do you process it? How do you assess it?

AARON RODGERS: Yeah, it's been a rough stretch since we played so good on Thursday night. We've lost each of those four in different ways, but we got to figure it out.

Obviously we added two big time players to the locker room. One is here and one is coming Monday. So everything is still right in front of us.

We got to somehow keep the belief in the locker room and start our run. Can't win ten in a row unless you win the first one. We got to be very critical of ourselves, each of us individually, tomorrow, and then come in with the right attitude all week and go to New England and get a win.

Q. How do you get everybody to keep the belief? Seems like a lot of the same mistakes keep happening.

AARON RODGERS: Stop listening you guys, number one. Number two, got to be accountable. I got to play better. That's the key. I got to play better. Got to find a way to run the ball better so we can actually pass. I thought did some nice thing in the passing game. Breece had a couple really nice ones. Spread the ball around to AG and Allen. Mike had a nice conversion.

But we got to run ball better and I got to play better.

Q. Not listening to us, what do you mean by that specifically? Reading the press clippings about being really good?

AARON RODGERS: Yeah, all of it.

Q. Even though you've had eight years of history with Davante is there still -- did you feel like there was more of an acclimation period than maybe you thought coming into the game?

AARON RODGERS: No, I mean, I threw a wide one to him on the first one. He kind of stumbled on the deep cross. Other than that I felt like we were on the same page.

Q. When you felt the momentum switch there with that pick, how difficult is it to get that back?

AARON RODGERS: Shouldn't be that difficult. I mean, I felt like the energy -- and starts with me, the energy for whatever reason at halftime was a little flat. I felt like it was flat before the game too. I mean, Sunday Night Football, so I got to look at myself and what I can do to bring better energy.

We all got to do better.

Q. What do you see in the run game right now?

AARON RODGERS: It seemed there was a lot of contact on our side of the ball, so I'm not sure if we were miss-targeted or just not winning the one-on-ones.

They have a stout D-line, but we did some really good things last week and just didn't carry over that momentum this week.

Q. Albrich talked about you guys not handling adversity the way that he wanted you to. What goes into handling it better?

AARON RODGERS: What goes into handling adversity better? Just being a great competitor. You know, there will be some ups and downs, some tough moments.

You got to keep doing the little things. That's what it comes down to. We just don't do the little things well enough consistently enough, myself included.

Q. Garret was pretty hard on himself. We were just talking to him about the pick that he dropped. You say anything to him? What can you do?

AARON RODGERS: I said, I'm going to come back to you. He's a dynamic player. We need to target him. Obviously nobody feels sicker than him about that play. He's a dynamic player.

Q. When we were talking to Davante, he made a comment that at times when you look around the huddle you see how much talent is there you're like, wow. Do you feel like because you know how much individual talent you guys have that guys are relying too much on the expectations, what you expect you can do instead of actually doing it in the moment?

AARON RODGERS: I don't know. I hope not. But I don't know.

Q. Aaron, you talk about adding Reddick and you added Adams. How do you take all that talent and make it into a team, not just a talented roster?

AARON RODGERS: It's a belief. You got to have culture changers in the midst of the talent to steer things in the right direction.

There is a lot of us leaders that are trying to do that week to week. It comes down to each individual making the right decisions during the week, preparation, and going out and playing as well as they can and trusting each other.

I've been loving with the messaging that Brichs brought to us. We had three great speakers last night at the team meeting and the energy seemed really good. For whatever reason, today it just kind of seemed a little flat in warmup.

It's Sunday Night Football, NBC, I live for these games. I just don't quite understand why the energy was a little bit flat.

Q. (Indiscernible.)

AARON RODGERS: I love playing. I mean, I love competing. For whatever reasons, sometimes there is moments where you feel like the energy is great, the energy is kind of medium, the energy is mild or flat.

Kind of felt it. Any time that happens you try and directly infuse some energy in conversation to get things going. I felt like once we started the game we had good energy, and then that shitty pick I threw kind of -- after that I felt like the energy just dropped off for whatever reason.

Q. Outside speakers or people internal?

AARON RODGERS: Guys on the team.

Q. Since you've been with the Jets you talked about its history. Watched last year from afar. There is a feeling here sometimes when the season starts getting away from this team it's, here we go again. How do you avoid that? (Indiscernible.)

AARON RODGERS: Just got to win. (Smiling.) Starting this week.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports
149962-1-1041 2024-10-21 04:29:00 GMT

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