Queensland Maroons head coach Billy Slater has suggested his players must be better on the discipline front if they want to recover the 2025 State of Origin series.

The Maroons were, particularly in the first half, sloppy when it came to errors and missed tackles.

The Maroons finished the game with 54 missed tackles, and Slater admitted the Blues were simply better than his side, leaving him feeling 'flat'.

"They were much better than us," Slater said during his post-match press conference.

"I feel pretty flat to be honest about our performance. Obviously New South Wales were much better than us, so I'm not taking anything away from them, but I think the flatness comes from how we hurt ourselves.

"Very ill-disciplined in the first half, and then that just snowballed against us. We didn't see the best of this Queensland team tonight, and that's what I'm most disappointed about."

Slater said his side needs more of the footy when the series heads to Perth, and they will have to make it happen.

"It doesn't just happen. You have to make it happen. We weren't prepared to make it happen the tough way tonight. Too many leg ups, too many penalties, a few errors, and that part of the game, New South Wales did better than us," Slater said.

"It's pretty simple. If you don't have the footy, you make it really tough on yourself. I can't question the effort and the commitment that the team have. It's a tough game out there, it's not easy to play that sort of game. They kept hanging in there and turning up for each other, but we just made it way too hard for ourselves."

Asked if he ever felt his side were close enough, Slater revealed that the scoreboard wasn't a reflection of the game.

"Close enough on the scoreboard, but not close enough in terms of the way that we were playing. It was still game on at halftime, but we needed to change things, and we didn't change them enough. It might look close, but in terms of how close we were to playing our best footy, we were nowhere near it," Slater said.

Captain Daly Cherry-Evans admitted that the side will need to be better than they have been in the last two games at Suncorp Stadium, having lost Game 3 there last year as well.

It's the first time Queensland have lost back-to-back games in Brisbane since 1997.

"I think disappointing is the best word to explain it, especially where we have played the last two games [at Suncorp Stadium]. To only walk away with one try, there is a bit of work to do there," Cherry-Evans said.

"As Billy sort of mentioned, when you're ill-disciplined, you put yourselves under pressure. We gave them a lot of possession, we missed a lot of tackles, and then we put ourselves under scoreboard pressure. Starting next game is definitely goling to help us.

The Queensland coach said decisions need to be better from his playing group, but said there is more expected of the playing group.

"Probably some decisions from the playing group. I've just spoken about the discipline side of the game and that's a choice. Probably a shift in that to start with. I'll look at my preparation as well, so I'm not out of this. It's not just the players, it's everyone," Slater said.

"I know there is so much more in this footy team. It's a series of three, best of three, you only have to win two games and that's still alive, so we will be going after it."