Well, that start was nuts. No harm, no foul, lotsa luck.
Good to see Boykin in there getting some time. They say he isn’t as good as Blake on the outside but I’ll have to see that to believe it.
Goddamn, is it time for Jacoby Jones to disappear or what?
That started out ugly, but man, it turned into one of the more dominating performances of the season. The Steelers were all but unstoppable.
Brown… dude needs to settle down a bit when he scores. First the flip, then the goalpost humping. He’s lucky he didn’t wreck a knee or blow out a nut. I know they all want to have fun, but sometimes it doesn’t take much. Ask Bill Grammatica about what it takes. All he did was jump up in the air to celebrate a kick and he tore his ACL.
I thoroughly enjoyed that Pittsburgh win. Yes indeed. Cincinnati acted like goons throughout and only hurt themselves, Pittsburgh pretty much had their way all day, and they both helped their playoff chances AND took the number one seed away from the hated Bengals.
I hated to see Dalton hurt himself, though. That was such a stupid way to wreck his season. He’s out at least one week with a broken throwing hand. No, I preferred to see him shit the bed in that inimitable Andy Dalton way with something at stake. Of course, I’m sure Bengals fans will be hot to blame the Steelers, saying they intentionally hurt him, because that’s what they do when things go wrong. Alas, Dalton threw the pick and then tried to make the tackle. Nobody’s fault but his. The low shot on Ben was pretty cool, though. No call on that, or on A.J. Green punting the ball into the stands after he scored a touchdown, but they got William Gay for celebrating and a ridiculous “crackback” call on Antonio Brown. Home cooking couldn’t keep the Bengals from puking all over the field. Then again, have you ever had Skyline? Vomit on a plate.
So, Pittsburgh is still in OK shape for the playoffs. It could be better, but given the injuries this year it’s nothing short of amazing that they’re still in the discussion. Any other team loses their franchise QB for 4 games and the best running back in the league and they’re history.
After a few tough losses from bad kicking earlier in the year it’s nice to see a win with the offence really just idling. The offensive line has looked good despite losing the starting C and LT early on. The next man up philosophy has definitely been on display this year. James stepped up for Miller last week, Williams of course has been a great pickup. This season could have been written off at several points but they are looking good heading into the final weeks.
Tough matchup coming up next week for the Offense…
Now reports are saying that Dalton is done for the year. If so, today we witnessed the death of the best Bengals team in a generation. They may limp into the playoffs, but A.J. McCarron isn’t going to take them to the Super Bowl.
Tough break for the Bengals if that’s true. Looked like such a harmless play too.
On another note, I wonder if Pouncey’s return is on the horizon for the Steelers. It would be nice having him back when the weather starts getting frigid and they need to take the air out of the ball more often.
Best in a generation ain’t saying much when talking about the Bengals.
Didn’t Pittsburgh basically tread water with the win because the Jets and Chiefs both won? And unless NE wins, don’t the Bengals retain the #1 seed because Denver also lost?
As far as Dalton goes, well…yep, his fault, although I seriously question running a screen play from that area of the redzone at that point in the drive. Whatever.
McCarron is better than people think, he needs reps. I think the Bengals may be okay, but it’ll depend on a lot of things going forward.
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Pretty sure New England is going to win out. Anything can happen, but that’s asking a lot of the Texans, Jets, Titans, and Dolphins. That’s a pretty easy closeout on paper.
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Denver plays the Bengals in two weeks. A.J. McCarron is meat on the table for the Denver defense.
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If Pittsburgh wins all 3 they’re in. They can even lose to Denver and get in. Assume they lose to Denver and the Jets win at Dallas. If the Steelers win at Cleveland and Baltimore and the Jets lose to New England Pittsburgh gets the 6th seed no matter what the Jets do against Buffalo.
Also, if Dalton doesn’t come back and A.J. finishes the season the Steelers could conceivably win the division unless he plays a LOT better than he did today.
It doesn’t seem that way on the face of it, but a LOT went right for Pittsburgh today. Nothing went right for the Bengals.
I’m not counting them out. McCarron may have looked lost a few times but he would have zero rapport with those guys. They have a good enough team around him that they can weather this one I think. He wasn’t afraid to throw some nice deep passes which seems to be the biggest hindrance when you have to bring in rookie backups like that.
It’s funny how this season goes. At around week 4 or 5 I assumed the division was hopeless and the fight was for the Wildcard. Now it looks like the Wildcard is going to be harder to get and they have to fight for the division. Without the division I think the Steelers will be the best team in a long time to potentially not even make the playoffs.
In other news it looks like they got Flexed out of a prime time game. The Baltimore game kickoff time was changed to 1 pm.
The last 20 minutes of the Broncos game is the most electric I’ve ever seen Heinz Field. I’m claiming a cold to explain why my voice sounds the way it does today.
Anyway, it was like watching 2 different games. In the first half, the Stillers were lucky that the deficit wasn’t more than those 14 points, and they didn’t look like they belonged in the same league as Denver. Second half they treated Denver like a baby treats a diaper. As always, Steelers are playing heart-attack inducing ball.
I had my chance to go, but the prices doubled before I pulled the trigger. This is the first time in nearly a decade I didn’t go to a Steelers home game. See what I missed?
I honestly thought the Steelers were finished after that disastrous first half. Then the defense woke up, and man, what a comeback. Now if the Steelers don’t make the playoffs with the only games remaining being against the dregs of the league they have only themselves to blame.
Of course, those games are division games against their two historical rivals, so watch, Pittsburgh will find a way to keep Baltimore and Cleveland in the game and then find a way to pull it out right at the end. It’s the Pittsburgh way, they actively try to kill their fans with their heart-attack games.
I meant to address this earlier…nobody in the Bengals camp is blaming the Steelers for the Dalton injury. Your assessment of them acting like “goons” would be spot on (in what can only be a reference to Burfict crossing the 50 during warmups to confront Vince Williams…you know, your nobody LB that posted to Twitter that he was going to “paint” Vontaze (ie, shoot him) the next time he saw him for what happened in the first game to LeVeon Bell…which we can agree was a legal tackle that ended in an injury).
Furthermore, the only issue I had in that game was your player that intentionally speared Eifert in the head causing a concussion that really hurt us in the game, and cause Eifert to miss two games now…and your player was fined $25k for it too. That kind of shit has to stop. It’s a lot easier to beat a team when your starting QB and the TD reception leader in the NFL are on the bench before the end of the first quarter.
This must be the thread where we pretend that words, no matter now patently ridiculous, justify Burfict’s incredibly violent performance and his blatant attempt to injure Ben by going low, and where it happens by deflecting those facts by making up nonsense. Furthermore, do you really believe that an NFL player would gun down another NFL player, especially after announcing it to the world? That sure justifies Burfict’s actions, yes indeedy.
I’d expect no less from a Bengals fan. You guys still spout the “Von Oelhoffen intentionally hurt his old teammate and personal friend” canard and use it to justify celebrating Bell’s injury as some sort of “justice”. Burfict’s is s goon, he has always been a goon, and nothing will change that.
You’re just mad because he’s not your goon.
I just got tickets to go down to Ratbirdland this Sunday. I have no Earthly idea where to park or anything about getting to the game, though. How about light rail? How does that work to get to the stadium? What’s the timetable? How far out do I park to avoid the traffic snafu?
Wow, today’s game results sucked.