The Pittsburgh Steelers’ 33-31 loss to the Cincinnati Bengals on Thursday night wasn’t particularly shocking. Mike Tomlin has never beaten an AFC North opponent on the road on Thursday Night Football. The Bengals were hungry, and the Steelers are old, coming off a short week. Fine. But the bigger issue at play is that it was a drastic failure of Pittsburgh’s offseason plan on the defensive side of the ball.
During his press conference Monday, Mike Tomlin talked about how “divisional intimacy” helps form the Steelers’ roster decisions. Defensive coordinator Teryl Austin said Tuesday the Steelers had the Bengals in mind when they made their secondary additions this offseason, chief among them trading for Jalen Ramsey and Darius Slay. On Thursday, the Joe Flacco-led Bengals dismantled the Steelers’ defense in a way that even Joe Burrow has rarely done. For all intents and purposes, the Steelers failed. They haven’t built a secondary that can slow down Cincinnati’s offense.
I don’t want to put all the blame on the secondary here. The run defense wasn’t good at all, allowing a league-worst rushing attack entering the game to run for 142 yards and 6.2 yards per carry. The defense as a whole got torched. But the Steelers didn’t build their roster to defend against Chase Brown. They got guys like Ramsey and Slay to try and help them slow down Tee Higgins and Ja’Marr Chase.
Ramsey was beaten by Higgins for the game-winning catch to set up Cincinnati inside the 10-yard line. Slay’s lack of speed showed up in a big way when Andrei Iosivas beat him deep down the field for a 37-yard gain on 3rd and 4 that set up a Cincinnati touchdown. He also let a ball that should’ve been picked bounce off his face mask and struggled in coverage all night.
The blame doesn’t all belong on the secondary, either. The coaches sure as heck deserve some blame when Ja’Marr Chase comes out after the game and says that the Steelers did exactly what they thought they were going to do. The defense, for all its talent, has been largely unimaginative and stagnant, and it’s not doing the players on the field any favors.
When the coaching staff makes it very clear that they brought in certain players to defend against a certain team, and they get torched by that team, it’s an indictment across the board. Maybe it was a bad night. Maybe the Steelers brought in the wrong guys. To be fair, Ramsey has been pretty solid all year, although he did struggle against Jaxon Smith-Njigba in Week 2, another elite receiver. Maybe Ramsey’s days of being able to take away No. 1 options are behind him.
But there’s no question that the plan failed on Thursday. The Steelers will have another crack at the Bengals in Week 11, and they’ll hope things are different. But I have zero confidence in that being the case after what went down Thursday.
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