How Mike Vrabel Addressed Patriots’ Turnover Woes After Week 3 Loss

Turnovers turned into a dire issue for the New England Patriots on Sunday.

New England lost 21-14 to the Pittsburgh Steelers despite outgaining their opponent by 166 yards. The Patriots squandered scoring opportunities with four lost fumbles and one Drake Maye interception in another frustrating home loss.

A reporter opened Mike Vrabel’s post-game press conference by noting a “lesson learned” from those turnovers. The head coach cut off the question to note that they already knew multiple giveaways isn’t a winning formula.

“We don’t need to learn a lesson,” Vrabel said. “We don’t need to (lose) a football game to know that turnovers are very hard to overcome.”

The Patriots held Aaron Rodgers to just 139 passing yards after a rough two weeks for the secondary. They also contained the Steelers to 2.5 yards per carry, and the offense sustained drives with four fourth-down conversions.

Yet turnovers negated those positive takeaways by swinging the outcome in Pittsburgh’s favor.

“They erase all the good things that you do and take away momentum,” Vrabel said. “They take away points and give them field position. So, we didn’t need to turn it over as many times as we did to learn a lesson. We knew that before, so it’s very unfortunate.”

The Patriots also got called for seven penalties, but Vrabel considered the turnovers “much more critical.”

“Ball security comes down to technique,” he said. “It comes down to other people protecting the guy with the ball, second guy in. Those are all things that we have continued to talk about, have talked about and will talk about.”

Vrabel will look to quickly correct the issue before New England’s Week 4 contest against the Carolina Panthers.

“We’ll watch the tape, and we’ll clearly address the ball-security. We got to move on. Fix it and move on.”