Mike Vrabel: We need Rhamondre Stevenson's ability, but he has to hold onto the football

The Patriots outgained the Steelers by 166 yards on Sunday and they had the ball for nearly seven more minutes than their visitors, but the Steelers headed back to Pittsburgh as 21-14 winners.

Turnovers were the major reason for that result. The Patriots lost four fumbles and quarterback Drake Maye threw an interception over the course of the afternoon.

Running back Rhamondre Stevenson had two of those fumbles, including one at the Steelers' goal-line, and he has now coughed the ball up nine times since the start of the 2024 season. Head coach Mike Vrabel said that the Patriots need Stevenson to clean up that aspect of his game.

"We were so excited about him and everybody is excited about him, the fans are, and we know what his capabilities are, and we've got to get him back," Vrabel said, via a transcript from the team. "We need him. We absolutely need him. You see what he was able to do for us last week, his ability to make some plays. Again, we'll just have to look at the technique and we'll have to look at the ball security, but we're going to need him. We need his ability, but we also need to take care of the football. It's a long answer to tell you that I'm not really sure 20 minutes after the game what we're going to do, but we need him because he helped us win the game last week, and it was a different story today."

Stevenson's goal-line fumble in the third quarter was the last time he touched the ball on Sunday and next Sunday's backfield workload will be telling about how the Patriots plan to handle things for the rest of the year.