Cincinnati Bengals vs. Pittsburgh Steelers Preview & Prediction | PFF

Cincinnati Bengals vs. Pittsburgh Steelers Preview & Prediction | PFF

Bengals and the Steelers. This one’s in Pittsburgh. Kind of feels like the Bengals season’s on the line here, right? Because, you know, their record’s obviously not great. What are they? Three and six. Is that what the record is right now? Yeah. I think they’re three and six. Joe Burrow’s practicing again. So, if you win these next two games that you play, you can realistically get Burrow back in there and there is an outside chance that you could still make the playoffs this season. As wild as that is to say, but if you lose the next two games and or I don’t know, maybe even if you go one and one, do you think you’re too far out of it? Do you not even want to risk it with Burrow? Now, it feels as though Burrow’s been working his butt off to get back out there with his guys. It kind of feels like he’s going to play. Um, but this is the conversation that we’re having here. You win against Pittsburgh this week and all of a sudden your season maybe becomes a one-ame season next week. And if you win that one, like I said, the Cavalry coming, you get Joe Burrow back. And for as much as No, Joe Burrow doesn’t play middle linebacker for this team. We know that things are different when Joe Burrow is out there and when he is a quarterback. You want to talk about the Steelers here or the Bengals? So, I think it’s a good call real quick on the Bengals. Here’s some other factors, too. If they beat the Steelers, they have the tiebreaker over the Steelers. That’s big time when you talk about divi the division race. Two, I think the plan is going to be to have Joe Burrow back by the Thanksgiving night game in Baltimore. And they play Baltimore twice in a three-week stretch. So, if you have Burrow for both of those games, give yourself a shot to win both of them. Maybe at the end of the day, you try to win a division ugly at 9 and eight. Somehow get there and next week isn’t any easier. they get New England. So, we’ll see where the Bengals go, but one week at a time is where their season is at. Trev, you were talking before about how the Buffalo Bills and and how dependent they are on the whether they turn the ball over or not when it comes to a win or not. Right. I’m going to counter you with the Pittsburgh Steelers and say this is actually the most extreme team when it comes to that. In the Steelers five wins this year, their turnover margin is a plus 12. getting short fields for Aaron Rogers. Easy drives. You know, they got kind of a conservative offense. They don’t score a ton of points, but if you give them opportunities, they will take advantage of them. In their four losses, turnover margin is a minus six. I I I I don’t think it’s I I think the Steelers at this point on both sides of the ball, they are what they are. Offensively, conservative passing game, one reliable wide receiver. The tight ends are a fun group obviously with a couple of different players in there and they don’t really run the football very well. Defensively, if the defensive line is A+ disruptive any given week like they were against the Colts, they can win. If they can’t completely control the game like against the Chargers and guys are getting rid of the football, Justin Herbert getting rid of the football quickly, then you have an issue. Joe Flacco the first time around when he played this team, he got rid of the football. He saw the coverage as well. His first read was open and very often that was Jamar Chase one-on-one on the outside. That’s really the difference in it to me. If you don’t give the Steelers offense easy opportunities, they’re going to have a hard time driving the ball 70 80 yards downfield. Yeah. And on on the Bengals side of things, just the the defense overall has just let them down so much. You know, they’re playing a they’re playing with a defensive line that doesn’t have any difference makers outside of Trey Henderson and obviously he’s been in and out of the lineup. their linebacker level. They are very committed to just those rookies playing in Barrett Carter and and um Demetrius Knight and they have really struggled. They’ve had some injuries in the secondary as well. The Bengals only have one game this season where they have allowed less than 27 points. One game. That’s just it. It’s it’s a recipe for the record that they have and honestly they’re they’re lucky to have the three wins that they do with that stat being what it is. However, on the flip side of things, we know they can still score points. Over the last three games, this team has a 37.7 points per game average. That is obviously number one in the NFL. When it comes to their last uh three games, they’ve struggled the most when it comes to on the road. You know, when you look at points per game on the road when they’re away from Cincinnati, only 12. And it’s just a massive difference um between that and I believe it’s 27 27.8 is how their average score when they are at home. So with this one being in Pittsburgh, uh they would really have to buck the trend of of what they’ve done so far this season. I just don’t I don’t know what version of the Steelers is going to show up this week. But with as much as their offensive line has really struggled, I am going to give them the benefit of the doubt here. Small win, Coward’s prediction, Steelers 28, Bengals 27. Um, I just I I I don’t know if the Bengals are going to have enough along the offensive line to mitigate that Steelers defensive line and how well they can play, how well they can get after the quarterback. So, I’ll say Pittsburgh wins this one. I think a big question for the Bengals going to be if they can run the ball as well as they did the first time with Chase Brown in that game. and they had a little hot stretch of running the running the football well. But I’m with you. I think I’m just taking the Steelers as the home team here. I think we’re going to get I don’t think we’re going to get quite the shootout we did last time. Although it would help if the Steelers had some other plan on the outside for Jamar Chase especially. I’m going to take the Steelers 23 to 20. I think the defensive line does a better job of getting to Flaco this time. Flacco, you just have to you have to take away his first read and make him move in the pocket. Then you feel a little bit better about it. And we’ll see. Maybe the Steelers can get those turnovers that they’ve been winning games with. But I’ll take Pittsburgh by field goal.

PFF’s Dalton Wasserman and Trevor Sikkema preview the matchup between The Cincinnati Bengals and The Pittsburgh Steelers.

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