The Pittsburgh Steelers used a 25-point fourth quarter to blowout the Cincinnati Bengals in Paul Brown Stadium 42-21. The win moves the Steelers to 8-5 on the season and drop the Bengals to 8-4-1. Cleveland fell back 7-6 with a bad loss to Indianapolis while the Ravens kept pace at 8-5 with a win in Miami.
Let me take a minute to run through the good news and bad news of today’s victory.
Good News? The Steelers and Ben Roethlisberger had 350 yards passing.
Bad News? The defense gave up 322 to Andy Dalton.
Good News? The Steelers had 543 total yards.
Bad News? The defense gave up 408 total yards.
Good News? Martavis Bryant and Antonio Brown combined for over 200 yards receiving and a touchdown.
Bad News? The Bengals’ A.J. Green had 11 receptions for 224 yards and a touchdown.
Let’s give credit where it’s due for this big road win. The offensive line, with Mike Adams starting his second straight game, surrendered zero sacks. That’s huge considering Roethlisberger’s banged up hand and recent problems with pressure up the middle.
Let’s also give some credit to the defense. Yes, the secondary was torched by A.J. Green but they also held the Bengals to 86 yards rushing and 3 of 11 on third down. This defense is not going to remind anyone of the Steel Curtain but if they can limit teams to little on third down that’s a good sign.
What more can I or anyone else say about Le’Veon Bell? 185 yards rushing and two touchdowns and he added six receptions for 50 yards and a score. I honestly don’t understand why he isn’t in the MVP discussion. Where wold this team be without him?
Hopefully the Steelers can keep this road magic going with their trip to Atlanta next week. The Falcons will be coming off of a Monday night game in Green Bay.
Marc Uhlmann writes for and co-owns www.steelcityblitz.com. Follow him on Twitter @SteelDad and the website @SCBlitz. Check us out on Facebook at facebook.com/steelcityblitz and on Fancred.com. You can hear him weekly during the season on game day on the Trib-Live Radio Steelers Pre-Game
photo courtesy bengals.com
3 comments
I want people to look closer at the Bungals stats. 224 Rec Yards by Green, now subtract that from Dalton’s 322 and the Bengals only had 98 Yards Rec combined by these guys: Sanu, Little, Hewitt, Gresham, Bernard and Hill. Two RB’s who can catch the ball and a pretty good No.2 WR and there No.1 TE combined for only 98 Yards Rec, think about that for a moment. Take the 408 total yards of offense and subtract what Adriel Jeremiah Green did today and you end up with less than 200 yards passing. Yes the D got torched by Green but I ask this question how many times have you seen Green get stopped this season other than injury? Look for a guy like Wheaton it’s basically his rookie year and Bryant is a rookie even though he has 7 TD Catches in 7 games. What this means is while they will make catches don’t expect them to turn into bonafide No.2 and No.3 WR’s over night, this is still a work in progress but nonetheless a Win is a Win and this was Big Win. Now they must back this up in HotLanta next Sunday and win there. The D got 3 turnovers even though it should have been 4 but the damn replay system must have been broken on the Gay INT cause they never show what exactly happened on that play. Dalton’s fumble can be explained like this: He got Cutesy with the ball and it backfired on him. Tuitt looked good but remember it’s Dalton not Brady or Luck. All in all good win for this team. Oh by the way here are 2 questions I want answered: 1.How dumb can a defense be if you can’t stop the same play and result from happening over and over and over again? and 2.How stupid can the Saints be for getting humiliated at home 41-10 to the lowly Panthers?
As for question one Vittorio, this has been a problem with LeBeau for some time. Can’t put my finger on it other than his players are taught to be so disciplined that it becomes tough to change on the fly. As for the second one, the phrase “any given Sunday” apples more now than at any time I can think of… Football has become so specialized in that games can depend on just a couple of one-of-one match-ups.
My first question steeldad was in reference to the Bengals not stopping LeVon Bell. As Steve Mariucci said on the postgame show the Steelers kept running 27 counter. Saw either Heath or Spaeth pull with the guard on a counter play and the play kept breaking. In other words the holes kept getting opened for Bell to run through them.