The Steelers dropped a very winnable game against the Bengals last Thursday night, falling in the final moments of a back-and-forth game. After building an early lead, they began to fall apart before a late surge proved insufficient. Even grabbing a late lead with minutes left fell through after allowing the Bengals to respond. It just wasn’t their day—as former Steelers QB Ben Roethlisberger firmly believes.
“There’s a 90-percent chance the Steelers blow this team out”, he insisted of the loss to the Bengals on his Footbahlin podcast. “If they play nine more times, the Steelers are gonna win nine. The Bengals are gonna get one out of 10. Everything that could’ve went right for the Bengals went right for them, and almost everything that could’ve went wrong went wrong for the Steelers. That game shouldn’t have been like that”.
It was an unusual game for the Steelers, forcing zero turnovers while the Bengals claimed two. Aaron Rodgers threw two interceptions, the first a questionable pass, the second a great play by the defensive back to wrestle the ball away from DK Metcalf. That was a key momentum-swinging play, but ultimately the defense couldn’t hold a late lead.
Yet the Steelers quickly built a 10-0 lead over the Bengals, looking to set up a long night for Cincinnati. The only problem is the Bengals responded with 20 unanswered points. Roethlisberger said early on, he pondered whether the Browns or Bengals were the worse team. I’m sure his opinion changed as the night progressed.
“I’m sitting there watching this game like, ‘The Steelers are gonna be able to do whatever they want this game’”, he said. “Like, ‘Let’s do a triple reverse pass. Let’s just try things’. Because the Bengals have no pass rush with [Trey] Hendrickson down”. Once again, he insisted that the Steelers should have blown the Bengals out. He even thought he would be sending the kids to bed early because “this is gonna be ugly quick”.
But did the Steelers really just catch the Bengals at their best? The Steelers were healthy on defense, and yet Ja’Marr Chase and Tee Higgins repeatedly burned them. While communication issues played a role, they also lost their man-to-man matchups.
Unfortunately, it doesn’t matter if the Steelers beat the Bengals in that game 9 times out of 10. They only play each game once, and that result counts in perpetuity. The best team doesn’t win every game—sometimes the most fortunate team does.
But at this point it’s not clear that we can say the Steelers are better than the Bengals. Certainly, Joe Flacco gives them a second life with a quarterback who can run the offense. Their defense is still terrible, even worse than the Steelers’. But if you can’t cover Chase and Higgins, you’re gonna have a bad time. So the Steelers better make changes before playing them again.
