In a season full of cognitive dissonance, this fact may be the most difficult to comprehend: This has been the most frustrating season in Cincinnati Bengals history, and they’ve yet to play Pittsburgh. That anomaly finally ends on Sunday afternoon, when the Steelers come to town for the first of two annual gang wars.
The Black and Gold are usually the primary reason for teeth gnashing and forehead slapping around these parts. I don’t need to elucidate the mind-blowing defeats we’ve suffered at the hands of those cheating, cheap-shotting SOBs from western PA. Making this season even worse, if that’s possible, is that somehow the Steelers are 8-3, a hard-to-fathom four games ahead of the Bengals before Thanksgiving. This level of success comes from a not very special team by Steelers standards, with castoff quarterbacks who scarcely seem much of an improvement for a franchise that hasn’t won a playoff game since 2016.
Indeed, a look at the advanced stats reveals two teams playing at about the same level, albeit on opposite sides of the ball. In terms of overall DVOA (a stat that measures efficiency), Pittsburgh is 15th, Cincinnati 17th. The offense/defense splits are, as you would expect, highly tilted: The Steelers are 22nd on offense and eighth on defense, with the Bengals sixth and 26th, respectively. The major difference comes on special teams, where Pittsburgh is second in the NFL, thanks largely to Chris Boswell’s reliability. The Bengals? 25th, dammit.
It really isn’t that much of a leap to say that the difference between 8-3 and 4-7 so far this year is the difference between Boswell and Evan McPherson, whose sudden and largely inexplicable downturn has been one of the season’s odder circumstances. Boswell has missed only two field goals all year, both from beyond 50 yards, and no PATs. Mac has missed six field goals and an extra point. Boswell, it should be noted, is making a bit more than McPherson and is living up to his contract extension. (Boswell re-signed for 4 years/$20 million in 2022, with $12 million guaranteed, and Mac is signed for 3/$14 with $5 million guaranteed.)
Boswell is also relied upon to be a more important part of the attack; incredibly, he’s made 16 more field goals through 11 games than McPherson. That’s in part because the Bengals have scored 13 more touchdowns than the Steelers (both teams have one return TD and no defensive scores). For all of Joe Burrow’s and the passing game’s brilliance, having confidence in your kicker changes the way games are called and played—and right now Pittsburgh has it and Cincinnati does not.
Certainly, one could argue that Pittsburgh has the edge on the sideline as well, and that’s certainly fair if you want to include coaching staffs beyond Mike Tomlin and Zac Taylor. No one doubts Tomlin’s culture-building and ability to wring out wins year after year, and he’s a fantastically gruff podium presence as well. But it should be recalled that Tomlin, for all his “never having a losing record in 17 seasons” consistency, annually gets a lot of static in Pittsburgh for losing to soft competition (see last Thursday against Cleveland) and a lack of postseason results (no wins in the past seven seasons, as mentioned above).
Tomlin is certainly a master at winning close games, for whatever reason one wants to give. Pittsburgh is 5-3 this season in that stat, compared to Cincinnati’s appalling 1-6, again providing for that four-game difference in the standings. Overall, Tomlin is now 103-64-2 in one-score games, a .609 winning percentage. Taylor is 22-33-1, a .333 winning percentage. Yes, his 0-8 in 2019 when the Bengals were the worst in the NFL and this season skew it some, but in a league where the margins are so slim, that record hurts.
In the strength-on-strength matchup, where Burrow and the Bengals lead the NFL in passing yards per game and the Steelers are eighth in pass defense by DVOA, one assumes Cincinnati has the slight edge. The Steelers, for all the talk of T.J. Watt’s brilliance and their vaunted defense, have just one sack more than the Bengals, 20-19. Pittsburgh makes up for that with steady pressure—33.9 percent, good for third in the league—and have covered receivers well across the board (they’re in the top 10 against all wideouts except No. 2 WRs, so perhaps watch out for Tee Higgins). The Steelers slowed the Ravens stalwart attack two weeks ago, but the Bengals should still put up some points on offense.
Can the Bengals stop Pittsburgh’s chuck-it-deep-and-hope-for-the-best attack enough to outscore the Steelers? For all of Pittsburgh’s investment in the offensive line and supposed commitment to the ground game, the Steelers and Bengals have remarkably similar advanced stats, with their Adjusted Line Yards within .1 yard of each other and rushing DVOA both below average (Pittsburgh 21st, Cincinnati 28th). The Bengals’ Adjusted Sack Rate is better as well, with some of that down to Burrow not taking the same number of sacks he has in the past while Russell Wilson and Justin Fields are two of the most regularly sacked QBs of the last few seasons.
The difference between Wilson and Fields is largely one of willingness to chuck it deep. Wilson is averaging 9.2 in average depth of target (ADOT) since taking over in Week 7, fourth-deepest in the league, while Fields was at 7.8. Burrow is 22nd at 7.6. Pittsburgh is generally good for one or two bombs per game to their lunatic wideout, George Pickens, and with their penchant for grinding out tight wins that’s often enough.
I’m worried about deep balls that aren’t caught but hurt Cincinnati nonetheless. Pittsburgh has been the beneficiary of just four pass interference calls this season, though they annually were near the top in the NFL in this stat in the Ben Roethlisberger days, for what it’s worth. Cincinnati has been flagged for that infraction on defense seven times. That’s not close to the most in the NFL (Detroit, surprisingly, has 14 DPIs against them) but in the context of the seldom-flagged Bengals it’s a lot. Cincinnati once again is excellent in this area overall, with 52 total penalties, just one more than Arizona, and has the fewest penalty yards of any team. “Oh, those undisciplined Bengals!” yell the clueless national pundits. But those seven DPIs are almost 15 percent of their total penalties.
All this is to say that given the way 2024 has gone it wouldn’t be surprising to see a close game decided by a crucial late pass interference call that goes against the Bengals (who are starting the mysteriously terrible Cam Taylor-Britt and rookie Josh Newton this week at corner), followed by a Boswell game-winning field goal and another excruciating defeat.
The last time Burrow played the Steelers, he was hanging 37 points on them back in 2022. (He missed both games last season after his wrist injury, with Jake Browning having two poor games against Pittsburgh, both defeats.) Their first encounter that season may be more indicative of the rivalry in general and this year’s Bengals in particular. That was the day Burrow threw four picks yet still drove the field and hit Ja’Marr Chase for what should have been the game-winning TD—but MacPherson’s PAT was blocked. Mac then missed a field goal in OT, and Cincinnati somehow conjured a loss.
Sound familiar? It’s a sequence of events (minus the INTs) that would fit neatly into this annus horribilus. Of course, the 2022 Bengals started 4-4 but ripped off a 10-game winning streak that put them seconds from a repeat Super Bowl appearance. A redux of that sort of hot stretch seems far-fetched, and even winning six in a row to close the regular season might not earn them a playoff berth.
Regardless of their success overall, though, beating Pittsburgh is always an important part of any Bengals season. Cincinnati hasn’t won a game since November 3, practically the Pleistocene Era in football time. Taking out the Steelers on Sunday afternoon at Paycor Stadium may not change this fall’s difficult trajectory, but it would at least provide a temporary salve.
Robert Weintraub heads up Bengals coverage for Cincinnati Magazine and has written for The New York Times, Grantland, Slate, and Deadspin. Follow him on Twitter at @robwein. Listen to him on Mo Egger’s show on 1530AM every Thursday at 5:20 p.m.
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