Sunday's loss to the Chiefs is one that stung for Cameron Heyward, and it didn't help when he went out to dinner with his wife after the game.
"I went to Cheesecake Factory and the waitress was a Kansas City fan," said Heyward. "How about that? She kept going on about how she was glad Kansas City won. I'm like 'are you kidding me?' My wife is laughing at me like she might not know."
Heyward, though, does know that the loss is one that this team must move on from. It's only two games into the season, and while 0-1-1 isn't where they expected to be, it's about moving forward and getting better now.
"I just want to apologize to Steelers Nation," said Heyward. "We lost this game, but we will move on from here and keep playing. We look forward to Monday."
Heyward said the loss should be placed solely on the shoulders of the players, not blame the coaches, and the key is everyone doing their job. He knows if they don't work together as a unit, nothing will be accomplished.
"It lies on us as players. Simple as that," said Heyward. "The coaches aren't out there on the field. The game plan was solid, we just didn't execute it.
"There are errors, and when you have errors like that they get exposed. We have to clean that up. It's unacceptable. Whoever is out on the field, we have to be sound on what we do. As a guy on this team who has been here for a while, I know if everyone does their 1/11th we win games. If we don't, we don't win games. We all have to work together to get better and try to get a 'W' on Monday.
"We have to worry about what we have to do now. We made some mistakes, now we have to correct it. We have to execute and do our jobs."
Things don't get any easier for the Steelers with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers on the horizon. The Bucs are coming off a 27-21 win over the Eagles, behind a strong performance by Ryan Fitzpatrick.
"We tied, we lost, let's get a win," said Heyward. "Let's get the trifecta. Let's get the job done. We can control what we do and look forward to playing football.
"All we ask is for the outcome to be a W. I don't care how we do it. I don't care how perfect it looks. I don't care how ugly it looks. Get the 'W' and move on."
Being smart: David DeCastro missed Sunday's game with a hand injury and said being smart is a key right now as he doesn't want to rush and injury it further.
"I am just making sure it's protected and I don't make it worse," said DeCastro. "I don't want to take one step forward and four steps back and miss more time. We have a good staff. They are being smart, we are all being smart. I want to get back out there as much as possible. I don't like it, it's abnormal, but it's part of it."
He said it:
"It's a long season. We still have a lot of games to play. I have faith in my guys. We have to play better. We have to bounce back this Monday. It's only two games. We have a long season." – Artie Burns
