Mike Vrabel stepped to the podium inside Gillette Stadium and felt no need to state the obvious.
“We didn’t need to turn it over as many times as we did to learn a lesson. We knew that before,” Vrabel said after the Patriots lost, 21-14, at home to the Steelers. “It’s very unfortunate.”
Sunday’s game saw the Patriots turn the ball over five times. And while Drake Maye was responsible for two of those (one tipped interception, one lost fumble) and Antonio Gibson had another, it was running back Rhamondre Stevenson’s two fumbles that were squarely in focus after a truly agonizing loss for New England.
Both of Stevenson’s fumbles — one on the opening drive to lead to the Steelers’ first touchdown, another into the end zone on what should have been a Patriots score coming out of halftime — were back-breaking for New England.
Vrabel issued a message of support after Sunday’s game.
“You sit there and we’re so excited about him and everybody’s excited about him, the fans are. We know what his capabilities are, and we gotta get him back,” Vrabel said. “We need him. We absolutely need him. You see what he was able to do for us last week [in Miami], his ability to make some plays. We’ll just have to look at the technique and we’ll have to look at the ball security, but we’re gonna need him. We need his ability, but we also need to take care of the football.”
Stevenson, who slammed his helmet to the turf in frustration after his second fumble, spoke plainly about how costly his mistakes were to the team.
“I’ve gotta hold onto the ball to have value,” Stevenson said. “If I can’t hold the ball, then they don’t need me.”
That’s where the situation obviously gets a bit sticky.
Stevenson averaged eight yards per touch on Sunday, recording the second-most receiving yards on the team (38) and averaging 4.5 yards per rush. He was coming off one of his best games as a pro, when he rushed for 54 yards and caught five passes for 88 yards in Miami.
Yet Sunday showed just how quickly most — or all — of a player’s production can be deemed insignificant if he can’t protect the football.
Stevenson suffered from a severe case of fumblitis at the start of last season, when he fumbled in each of the Patriots’ first four games (losing two of them). He managed to go five games without a fumble after that rough start, but fumbled three times in five games later in the season.
This year, with new coaching all around him from head coach Mike Vrabel to offensive coordinator Josh McDaniels to running backs coach Tony Dews, Stevenson appeared to have capitalized on a fresh start with no fumbles on 25 touches through the first two weeks.
Sunday, though, was a different story, and Steelers head coach Mike Tomlin stated after the game that the team made sure to focus on Stevenson’s spotty ball security while practicing this week.
“We spend a lot of time on our ball search culture,” Tomlin said. “We identify opportunities, and certainly [Stevenson] had some fumble issues last year. So it was an agenda item for us.”
With the fumbling issues resurfacing for Stevenson, future opponents will continue to sense blood in the water and make extra efforts to punch the ball free from the running back.
The issue, though, was further complicated when Gibson — replacing Stevenson after the second fumble — was careless with the football himself on an otherwise unremarkable run up the gut in the third quarter. Behind those two veterans on the depth chart is rookie TreVeyon Henderson, who’s looked capable of handling smaller workloads thus far but may not be quite ready to take over as the team’s primary running back.
That is why Vrabel didn’t quite have an answer after the loss for what the next steps will be.
“I’m not really sure 20 minutes after the game what we’re gonna do,” Vrabel said. “But we need him, because he helped us win a game last week. And it was a different story today.”
While the fumbling issues are clearly back in the forefront, and while a quick solution may not be evident, both the head coach and the quarterback seemed to suggest that the team will continue to have faith in Stevenson.
“Yeah, he’s one of our best players. I think there’s nothing that I think he can do that would change my view of him as a player, as a teammate,” Maye said. “He knows just as much as we know, ball security, that’s the number one thing as a running back. … So just pump him up, be there for him, and we know we need him throughout the season.”