After further review …
The only lingering debate in the Steelers' locker room in the wake of Cardinals 24, Steelers 10 involved what might stand as the most accurate summation of what had transpired on Sunday afternoon at Acrisure Stadium.
Dan Moore Jr. chose "embarrassing."
T.J. Watt opted for "we got pummeled."
Mike Tomlin's preference was "JV football."
It was not what anyone saw coming.
But with a short week staring them in the face thanks to a scheduled visit on Thursday by New England, the Steelers were in agreement on at least two things.
No. 1, they have no choice but to bounce back quickly.
And No. 2, they're confident in their collective capability to do so.
"I don't think it'll have a lingering effect," Moore maintained. "I think it'll be, I guess you could say, a redemption.
"I think we're anxious right now to go back on the grass and prove that we can be the team that we've shown in the past."
Mason Cole does, too.
"In this league, you're professionals," he said. "We know what we have to do in four days. It's not our first loss of the season, right?
"We'll come back from it."
Added Minkah Fitzpatrick: "If we are who we think we are we know we don't need to panic. We need to regroup, focus and get our attention on what we need to get our attention on.
"But we don't need to panic."
What they need to do first and foremost is not let the disappointment become defining.
The Cardinals game, among other things, provided a painful but at the same time an apparently necessary reminder that the Steelers won't be who they think they can be without their best collective effort.
It takes complementary football in all three phases.
And it takes attention to detail and execution in the weighty moments, no matter the opponent.
"We gotta go into games like these and realize we gotta play our best ball," Fitzpatrick emphasized. "I don't understand why games like this, we should be winning by a lot of points, playing great defense, and when we don't play our best ball that's not the case. They're an NFL team, they get paid too, so they're gonna take advantage of us not playing our best ball.
"Thursday we gotta go out there and focus on us playing our best ball, not worrying about who we're playing, what the record is, who they have at quarterback, X, Y, Z. We need to focus on us and playing our best ball."
They know what can happen when that happens.
Sunday was, among other things, an expensive refresher course on the consequences of not meeting that challenge.
"I think we've seen if we play good football, we don't turn the ball over, we're gonna be in it," Cole said. "(Sunday), we didn't. We didn't play clean football, I turned the ball over, and the game got out of hand.
"You gotta play clean football in this league, especially down the stretch."
As uncharacteristic a development as any was special teams demon and special teams captain Miles Killebrew committing three penalties against Arizona.
That's the type of day it turned out to be for the Steelers.
But they won't have to wait long to seek the redemption Moore referenced.
"No one wants to lose, right?" Killebrew said. "But the positive side is it is a short week.
We're forced to look forward. We can't sit in it. We can't dwell on it.
"By no means are we just gonna skip over it. We're gonna address it head on, move on and get ready for the Patriots."
