Let me in on this. Shanahan, I'll put my lower jaw and flying spittle on the line against your beady, darting eyes.

This will be a good barometer for us because this is by far the best team we've played and maybe will play. They are a football team that is not used to losing at all. For them to come off a tough loss against Carolina has really probably compounded the challenge that we have.

We've got to run the ball better, there's no question about that. We've played two pretty good defenses and this one's no different, they're ranked fifth against the rush. We have to be able to run the ball more efficiently than we have the last couple weeks. We can't sit there and rely on throwing the football all the time. Not that we don't want to have balance, we do.

Letting them take the opening drive right down against us wasn't very encouraging. We responded. We had some guys make plays ... (but) we just didn't play very well.

We were put in that situation when we lost those three games. We have to come back and win at home against Detroit and go on the road wherever we need to go.

I was happy for him. That was his first live contact since last year's championship game. He's been running well in practice the last couple of weeks. He has been a trooper. He has sat there and been patient. Duce ran really hard against a good football team.

In hindsight, obviously you wouldn't want to do that in a game like this. Against this caliber of a football team, you cannot ruin opportunities like that. He understands that. I just told him to let it go, learn from it, and let's move on. Don't dwell on it.

We did a good job today of having our offense break the huddle quickly. And we've had a lot of work against the no-huddle offense. We have hand signals for the defense on the sideline. So those are things that shouldn't come as any surprise to us.

I think Willie is a guy who has seized an opportunity. For the first two games he got over 100 yards. We didn't really run the ball that well against New England, but Willie is a guy who has a lot going for him and the best is still ahead of him.