On the game: “Disappointing outcome with very clear-cut reasons for the outcome, starting with special teams. When you allow two returns for touchdowns that’s generally not going to end up being a good thing. That’s 14 points. You have to cover, make tackles when we have a chance to tackle. This is a guy (WR Joshua Cribbs) we talked about at the start of the week who could hurt us. We didn’t do a good enough job on him.

“Offensively, we dropped balls. I thought our quarterback showed strides of the progress he’s made. Nine dropped balls, I believe it is - five for first downs and five or six in the third quarter which were critical plays for us. I thought that the quarterback overcame those drops and continued to play at a high level. But the drops are nothing new. You convert half of those drops or a reasonable amount and that makes a difference.

“We made a lot of plays offensively and I thought we showed a lot of gumption late coming down the field and getting the game tied, then even in the final possession getting ourselves in position with very limited time to make a throw to the end zone. But when you drop nine balls, and we had 39 to 40 by the NFL’s account going into this game – 50 plus by my count – it’s going to be very difficult.

“Defensively we fought and caused a couple of turnovers. But when you allow a team to run the football the way they were able to run the football you’re not going to have much of a chance to win.

“Fundamentals. Defensively you’ve got to stop the run. Special teams you’ve got to cover and offense, when you’re throwing the ball, you gotta catch it. I thought Jamaal (Charles) again showed that he’s pushing to try to be one of the top guys in the league at that position. He’s continued to impress me. Those are things we have to grab on to without being blind to some of the other more obvious negatives.”

What did the defense do to allow RB Jerome Harrison to run for that yardage? “I don’t think we tackled as we need to tackle. One of our keys going in was our front line must win that battle. From my vantage point, it did not look like that battle was won and when you lose that battle you generally lose [the game]. I saw a lot of movement on their part and our guys going one way, the wrong way, too much of the time.”

Is there a common denominator to all the yardage you’ve given up the last three weeks? “We know we have to fit perfect on defense. Our margin of error - and I’ve said it thousands of times - is not one that we can get away with it. There are some teams that can get away with it but we can’t. They had two tight [ends] in there a bunch of the game and we were just unable to fit and make the plays to keep their forward progress from going. You give up 350 yards rushing, that’s not a good thing. We created some turnovers and it looked to me like they were playing hard but just weren’t able to get the job done. Number one going into this game was stopping the run and make them beat us throwing the football.”