Mike Tomlin Comments on the Loss in Denver

That is a tough defeat, as they all are. That was a tough, hard-fought game. Just in a nutshell I thought they made the significant plays in the second half of the football game, particularly down the stretch, really kind of in all three phases. We lacked the significant play, the game defining play. They made them. Obviously when that happens you are going to lose football games like we did tonight. We accept that; we acknowledge that. We have to get better and get better in a hurry. We have a new challenge facing us in about six and a half days.

Can you talk about the injuries to Ramon Foster and Marcus Gilbert?
Ramon had an eye injury of some kind. He is being evaluated as we speak. Marcus just hyper-extended his knee. Hopefully that won’t be serious. We’ll see.

Can you talk about the ability to possess the ball?
That was our intensions in terms of how we worked. We needed to possess the ball. We needed to get stops. Time of possession is just that. When you look at the scoreboard they got it done, we didn’t. The plan didn’t come to fruition.

Can you talk about the decision to challenge the play near the goal line?
I didn’t know whether the ball came out or not. They were in a hurry-up mode. You are not getting that information quickly in hostile environments. I thought it was worthy of a timeout right there to see for ourselves. Obviously he didn’t fumble the ball so they maintained possession and then they went in and scored.

Were you able to see it?
Someone did. That’s why it was given to me.

You ran the no-huddle – was that the plan?
We had planned to do that. Not specifically how it unfolded, but game circumstances change things sometimes. I was comfortable with the no-huddle attack and what we were doing in it, just not enough significant plays made particularly down the stretch.

Did their no-huddle cause you some problems?
We didn’t make significant plays, third down plays, plays that get you off the field. They did. They didn’t have many third down opportunities. I think they were five or six of nine, something like that. We just didn’t make enough football plays. You have to give credit to them. They did, they executed.

Peyton Manning has been away for a year. What did you think of his performance?
He is Peyton.