When Adam Gase met with his players last Wednesday, he spoke about what kind of game it would be Sunday with the Steelers.
He expected it to be a low-scoring, defensive-dominated game in which they could not turn the ball over. It went pretty much according to plan, and Gase praised the way Sam Darnold managed the game. Darnold did not put up great statistics (183 yards, 1 TD), but he was not being asked to. He did not throw any interceptions, although a second-quarter fumble did prove costly.
“He played that game exactly the way that we talked about it on Wednesday,” Gase said, “when we met with our team and we talked about how we had to play that game, offense, defense and special teams, it was, outside of that one play, our guys executed what we wanted to do as a team.