By Matt Pepin, Globe Staff

"Not our best day out there," he said.

Brady was held to 198 yards passing, largely because he didn't have the ball much. The Steelers held the ball for nearly 20 minutes longer than the Patriots.

"We just didn't execute very well on offense. I don't think we complemented our defense very well," Brady said. "In the first quarter we had an opportunity to go answer their score, and you know, we go three-and-out, so there was too many three-and-outs, there's just a poor level of execution all the way around. Individually, we all have to look in the mirror and figure out what we need to do better."

Despite poor play on both sides of the ball, the Patriots weren't out of it until the very end, when Brady was stripped of the ball and it rolled through the back of the end zone for a safety.

"We never really played with the lead, we never really played the game on our terms," Brady said. "I think they played very well defensively, they have a lot of good players over there, great scheme, great coaching. We give them, certainly, a lot of credit. We understand if we play like that we're not going to beat many people at all."

More from his postgame Q&A (watch the full video here):

On the Steelers' defense: "They run a lot of the same stuff every week. I just don't think we did a very good job handling it, or adjusting to it, or playing against it. I thought they were very physical, and we didn't really match their physical style. We've got to run the ball better, we've got to throw the ball better. We've got to execute better all the way around."

On being stuck on the sideline while the Steelers controlled the clock: "You always want to be out there, and the defense is busting their butt to get them off the field, and like I said, we've got to complement them as well, so if they go on a long drive, we can't go in there and go three-and-out like we did. We've got to do a better job of that, and look, it's a good football team, we played them on the road. There's not much margin for error when you play a good team on the road. And we certainly made plenty of errors."

On a fourth-quarter pass that appeared to be a touchdown to Rob Gronkowski, but was ruled down at the 1: "It's not up to me. I don't know how it looked on TV. I wish they would have reviewed it, but they didn't, and we kept fighting to the end, as we always do, we're always going to fight to the end."

On the return of running back Kevin Faulk: "He's such a spark plug for our offense. He does so many things well. For a guy who didn't play football for a year, it certainly didn't look like it. He played well, he played hard, made some big plays running the ball, catching the ball. I'm sure he's going to be sore tomorrow. He took some big hits. But it's great to have him back."