Steelers 24, Vikings 21
Q. What did you guys think of Aaron Rodgers today?
JONATHAN GREENARD: As we all seen, as advertised. Crazy arm, obviously just getting the ball out quick, understanding the defense like to find the soft spots, and they knew we'd be obviously rushing to try to get to him so they tried to get the ball out quick to throw us off and get the run game going. They had a good game plan so I think they executed pretty well.
Q. How much were you battling physically against them?
JONATHAN GREENARD: Yeah, you get bumps and bruises and stuff like that, but ultimately it's part of the game. I was fine. We're going to get those.
Q. What's the answer for an offense's quick gain for most of the game?
JOSH PATEL: Get on the body. We tried to do that. Missed a couple tackles, DK go down the field for 80 yards. Obviously tackling got to be better. We've got to as a group got to find a way to get these guys down. That's really how you stop quick gain, get on the body and tackle and we just didn't do that at a very high clip this evening.
Q. Josh, how would you evaluate the run defense?
JOSH PATEL: Yeah, I would say it wasn't terrible, but we just hold ourselves to certain standards, and when you get a guy like Aaron Rodgers to sit back there and control the game off of running the ball and when they don't even got their star running back in, it wasn't like they was hitting us for 50 -- like Bijan, 200 yard game, but they did enough to keep them in the drives and make the time of possession even with our offense.
So although we was getting stops, they still were controlling the time of possession, controlling how much time we were on the field, and we've got to be better for sure.
Q. Jonathan, you get the ball out (indiscernible) how it hops, right?
JONATHAN GREENARD: Hey, man. We've just got to find it. Things like that happen in ball and you can't look at that play and be like, what could I have done more or like what could I do better. It's the football gods weren't on our side at that point, and honestly just making sure we don't let that be the tale of the whole game.
Because obviously we wanted that turnover really bad, but that sometimes can be deflating for a team. Dang, we almost had it. But even myself I'm working on that to not be in that mode of man, one play is bad. Obviously being a captain as well, just owning and understanding that everybody is watching how you handle certain things.
Got to be better, man. Just got to be better.
Q. What did you think of the way Carson fought throughout the course of the game?
JOSH PATEL: Everybody, I would say -- shout-out to Carson. He was fighting. He was getting hit, getting back up. The O-line going down, he's back there still doing his best to help us get the win. That's the team, man.
We've got a gritty team. We're going to fight until the end, 60 minutes. We just got to make sure in those 60 minutes we are executing and doing the right things to limit those stressful situations. We know we play well in situations like that, one-score games. You can check the history since KO and them been here, but it's just a matter of getting to that point and protecting Carson and getting him in a rhythm and don't allow him to just back against the wall and make him feel like he has to scramble around and make a play, because we doing our job from the get-go.
It's complementary football. Special teams played great. Gave up one and just little stuff like that throughout the game caused you to go into the fourth quarter, and now Carson fighting with his back against the wall trying to find ways to will us to a win.
Yeah, we've got him obviously the leading the way right now, but, yeah, we got a team that's going to fight until the end, but we can't be in that situation every week.
Q. On DK's touchdown, was that something on your side?
JOSH PATEL: Just tackling. Just tackling. At the end of the day, he caught the ball. We had guys had a chance to get him, and I mean, obviously we could have probably been better in coverage somewhere. We'll check the tape and see what happened there. But for the most part we've just got to get him down, live to fight another day.
FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports