Their wide receiver tandem is the best in the NFL, but their offensive line is not. Their franchise quarterback was a spectator on Thursday night and will continue to be until sometime in December because of a toe injury, but that might be the safest place for him because the "pass protection" has allowed an average of 49 sacks over the previous 5 seasons. So it would seem that the best way to deal with this aerial circus is to go after the quarterback through the offensive line and cut the proverbial head off the snake.
Perfect. With their replacement quarterback being a 40-year-old man who was neither elusive nor fleet of foot even as a 23-year-old rookie, and with him facing a defense that had posted 17 sacks and 38 hits on the quarterback in the previous 3 games — all victories — it seemed as though this was an advantageous matchup and a recipe for a fourth straight victory.
Ah, but one thing could go wrong, and boy did it ever. An effective running attack could serve to distract the pass-rushers from doing their thing and compromise the coverage, but while that was a theoretical possibility it didn't seem like a reality, because their running attack came into the game ranked 32nd in the NFL. Their leading rusher had mustered 202 yards on 74 attempts (2.7 average), and the team was averaging 3.1 yards per attempt over the first 6 games of the season.
Sure, a running attack could blunt the defensive strategy of minimizing those receivers with a withering pass rush, but this particular running attack didn't seem to be capable of being much more than a speed bump for the Steelers pressure packages on the race to the quarterback.
Didn't turn out that way, though, which proved to be the main reason the Steelers lost to the Bengals, 33-31, on Thursday night at Paycor Stadium, a loss that snapped their 3-game winning streak and dropped them to 4-2 and shaved their lead in the AFC North to one-and-a-half games.
So effective was starting RB Chase Brown – 108 yards on 11 carries (9.8 average) – and the Bengals' running attack as a whole – 142 yards on 23 attempts (6.2 average) – that the Steelers pass rush sacked Joe Flacco just twice and hit him 6 times on the way to him completing 31-of-47 (66 percent) for 342 yards, with 3 touchdowns, 0 interceptions, and a rating of 108.6.
The Steelers had spent a good bit of their offseason acquiring cornerbacks Jalen Ramsey and Darius Slay and Brandin Echols to join Joey Porter Jr., with the idea of being able to match up with the likes of JaMarr Chase and Tee Higgins all over the field. But in the NFL there is no coverage that can be successful without consistent pressure on the passer, and there can be no consistent pressure on the passer when the front 7 is constantly being gashed by the opponent's running attack.
Chase was targeted 23 times, and he ended up with 16 catches for 161 yards (10.1 average) and 1 touchdown; Higgins was targeted 10 times, and he ended up with 6 catches for 96 yards (16.0 average) and another touchdown; and tight ends Noah Fant and Andrei Iosivas combined for 7 more catches for 93 yards (13.3 average) and another touchdown.
Add it all up, and the Bengals converted 8-of-15 on possession downs, enjoyed what amounted to a 9-minute edge in time of possession, and scored on 7 of their final 8 offensive possessions, including 6 in a row.
Joe Flacco is a proven NFL starter who was the MVP of Super Bowl XLVII, and to this day remains sufficiently skilled as a distributor of the football and savvy enough to read coverages and get the ball out of his hand quickly to entice teams to still be interested in doing business with him. And if those qualities are supported by an effective running game, Flacco is very capable of doing exactly what he did on Thursday night to the Steelers.
After the Steelers defeated the Cleveland Browns on Oct. 12 to get to 4-1, this game in Cincinnati was viewed as an opportunity to put a stranglehold on a division where the preseason favorite Baltimore Ravens were 1-5 and playing without injured QB Lamar Jackson, and the Bengals were desperate enough to hit the trade market in search of a stopgap until Burrow can return. That he would be playing this effectively with literally only days to absorb the playbook and find a rhythm with his offensive teammates is usually only the script for a corny Hollywood movie.
Throughout Steelers Nation, this loss will be attributed to some combination of the team not being ready to play and/or taking the Bengals lightly. But that really isn't supported by how the game unfolded.
The Steelers scored a touchdown on their opening possession for the third time this season – something they couldn't manage at all in 2024 – and built a 10-0 lead before the game was 20 minutes old. And then when the Bengals came roaring back to score 20 unanswered points to take a 10-point lead, 20-10, midway through the third quarter the Steelers put together touchdown drives of 61, 73, and 68 yards over their next four possessions to hold a 31-30 lead with less than 3 minutes remaining to play.
But they couldn't stop the run, and because they couldn't stop the run, they couldn't turn the heat up on Flacco. And because they couldn't turn the heat up on Flacco, their coverage was rendered toothless. No takeaways for the second straight game, and they broke up only 6 passes in a game where Flacco put the ball up 47 times.
And a lot of that success throwing the football can be traced to the success the Bengals had running the football.
Eleven times on first-and-10, the Bengals handed the ball either to Brown or Samaje Perine, and those 11 carries netted 109 yards (9.9 average). That kept the Bengals "ahead of the chains" as the saying goes, and their ability to largely avoid obvious passing situations allowed them to play the game through their receivers, who as previously established are the best in the NFL.
Certainly, it was disappointing to have the Steelers run defense regress after it had done a respectable job in the previous 2 games – 3.5 yards per carry vs. the Vikings and 3.8 yards per carry vs. the Browns – but the fact they lost a division game in which the offense put up 31 points and didn't create any short fields for the Bengals with turnovers is what stings most of all.
As the NFL is a copycat league, the Steelers can expect their upcoming opponents to employ the same tactic until their defense does a much better job of stopping the run.
"We gotta stop the run. It's as simple as that," Cam Heyward told Chris Adamski of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. "The long runs (against), it comes down to execution. And when we don't do that, we are a bad defense."
And if they don't get that run defense fixed, all of the pass-rushers and coverage cornerbacks they spent so much time and effort to assemble just won't matter.
