Mike Tomlin

continue on in this tournament as the road gets narrow.

We certainly can't be penalized in that phase of the game, and particularly from a return perspective, negating the chance of any field flipping plays or any significant plays that way.

We just can't run the risk of that.

I've been pleased with our punting and gunning in the punt phase.

There's been minimal return yards, really over the course of the season.

We've had minimal return yards.

I think we got 170 return yards in the punt return game in 17 games.

And that's certainly solid.

And I think Sunday night was reflective of that as well.

On defense, I thought largely down in and down out, we did what we needed to do to minimize the impact of Derrick Henry.

It certainly didn't start that way.

He broke that big run early.

That's a credit to him.

It's a credit to them strategically in terms of identifying a schematic that they wanted to assault us with.

But I just thought down in and down out.

We did what we needed to do schematically in terms of allocating our guys and planning the appropriate front structure.

And I think in turn, our guys did what was required of them.

We put a lot on our men up front.

We create one on ones with our bigs up front.

We require our bigs to win those battles.