Ryan Magill admits it's "difficult to get back on the horse" following a record Ulster Championship loss to Armagh but says Down will embrace the Tailteann Cup.
The Mournemen caused a huge upset when they dumped the 2025 All-Ireland finalists and 2026 Allianz League winners Donegal out of the provincial championship in the quarter-finals.
However, the much anticipated clash with Armagh proved a complete mis-match with Kieran McGeeney's side recording an incredible 3-33 to 0-14 win, the highest tally ever in the history of the Ulster Championship.
With Westmeath beating last year's Tailteann Cup victors Kildare to advance to the Leinster SFC final, that meant that Down, despite winning the Division 3 title, would miss out on the race for Sam Maguire, instead facing Leitrim in the secondary competition on 16 May.
Magill admitted that the manner of Sunday's defeat hurt but the team, Tailteann Cup winners in 2024, will give their all to claim more silverware.
"It's massive to have another competition that we can bounce back from [after] the Ulster Championship," he told RTÉ Sport.
"If you win the Tailteann Cup you have an automatic spot in the Sam Maguire next year so we'll try to get ready to go again and try our best and hopefully be in the Sam Maguire next year.
"It's difficult to get back on the horse after taking such a bad beating last week but, no, if you have any aspirations to go further we need to dust ourselves down and go again and see where that takes us.
"We know within ourselves, the quality we have and the hard work we put in, we had lads who played brilliant games against Donegal and then maybe just didn't show up against Armagh.
"Neither game is how we [see] ourselves, there are the highs of one week and the lows of next week. We just have to keep going."
The Naomh Mhuire / An Bhoirinn clubman also dismissed the suggestion that the one-week turnaround from their victory over Jim McGuinness' men had any part to play.
"We felt like we were ready to go," said the defender.
"Armagh were similar, they played Fermanagh last week so we were both on the same path. I don't think a week was too short.
"We haven't analysed [the defeat] as a group yet; we probably all came home and sat with our thoughts and see what went wrong and see where we can improve the next day.
"Obviously it was majorly disappointing."
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