PITTSBURGH -- A day after a 30-point season-opening loss to the Patriots, Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger reassured his teammates during their Monday run.
"I said [on Monday], 'Hey guys, look up,'" Roethlisberger said Wednesday. "'The sun's still shining. The sky's still blue. The best thing is we still get to play on Sunday.' It's Week 1."
Roethlisberger remained upbeat about the team's outlook Wednesday morning, reiterating that any problems were small fixes, while also doubling down on his postgame assertion that he needed to improve.
"It's not like all of a sudden we have to go back to the drawing board," Roethlisberger said. " ... It's just, we all need to, starting with myself, play better. It's nothing drastic on anybody's plate. It's just little things here and little things there."
Instead of dissecting flaws of others in the Steelers' passing game, Roethlisberger focused on himself.
"Quarterback's got to get better," he said.
Despite Donte Moncrief's four drops Sunday night, Roethlisberger voiced confidence in the receiver and said it wouldn't affect his targets in the home opener against the Seattle Seahawks.
"I don't think about, 'Oh man, did this guy make this play or didn't make that play?' Because to me, we all kind of have a clean slate every week," Roethlisberger said. "That's me included. I threw an interception. I wasn't the most accurate passer. So I'm not thinking about that this week. I'm thinking about moving forward and how to do we get better and how do we make plays."
And when asked about possible interference on his deep attempt to wide receiver Johnny Holton on third-and-6 that ended the Steelers' first drive, Roethlisberger was quick to shoulder the blame for the incompletion.
"I let it fly," Roethlisberger said. "And obviously I didn't let it go far enough, because I think if I'd thrown it a little further, he could've run under it, and we could've had a big play there on the first drive."
So there wasn't any interference?
"If I had thrown it further," Roethlisberger said, "it wouldn't have even been an issue."