How can you not be excited for a primetime game against a divisional opponent? The Pittsburgh Steelers’ offense certainly seemed up to it on Thursday night against the Cincinnati Bengals. But the defense? Not so much.
The Steelers’ defense, full of big names and talented players, allowed QB Joe Flacco to throw for three touchdowns and gave up 33 points in the loss. Kay Adams asked Dan Orlovsky to break the game down on Friday’s episode of Up & Adams. For Orlovsky, it all came back to one thing.
“If you ask me one word to describe the defense as a whole last night, it would be unengaged,” Orlovsky said. “They felt, just watching that tape, it felt everybody on the defense to a man was just unengaged. Unengaged with the physical element of the game, unengaged with their coverage, unengaged with being there, unengaged with tackling, unengaged with doing the selfless stuff of defense. That was the overall takeaway: that everybody just felt unengaged with that game.”
How can so many players be disinterested in a game? Yes, they played on Sunday, so it was a short week. But the Bengals are a divisional rival. And if the Steelers won that game, they would have a commanding lead in the AFC North.
But if you put on the tape, as Orlovsky said, you’ll see some glaring lack of effort. Our very own Alex Kozora noticed it when Bengals WR Tee Higgins caught a short pass and scooted into the endzone.
Tee Higgins’ TD. Chuck Clark misses the tackle and then…Joey Porter Jr., Darius Slay? Anyone want to try tackle Higgins? Just gonna let him go by. Neither even touch him.
Probably a TD all the same but…just no effort here. #Steelers pic.twitter.com/DwVUWENW9g
— Alex Kozora (@Alex_Kozora) October 17, 2025
Could the Steelers have kept Higgins out of the endzone? Who knows. But you’re defenders, for goodness’ sake. Make him work (and pay) for it.
That lack of effort showed up elsewhere for Orlovsky, too.
“Their pad level against the run, and their gap integrity against the run, was very poor,” Orlovsky said. “About as poor as I’ve seen from that unit since last year against Baltimore.”
Fixing the run defense was one of the biggest points of focus for this Steelers organization this offseason. The 2024 campaign ended with the Baltimore Ravens bludgeoning the run defense over and over again in the Wild Card round of the playoffs to the tune of 299 rushing yards. The Steelers drafted two defensive linemen, Derrick Harmon and Yahya Black, to address the issue.
And in Week 1, the Steelers’ run defense looked like that focus was all for naught. The New York Jets ran for 182 yards in that game. Thankfully for the Steelers, they improved week after week. Last Sunday, the Cleveland Browns only ran for 65 yards.
And the Bengals had the worst rushing offense in the league going into Thursday night. The Steelers’ run defense should have bottled up the Bengals to give the pass rushers a chance to tee off on a suspect offensive line. Yet the Bengals ran for 142 yards. That was almost 60 yards higher than their previous season-high of 85 against the Detroit Lions.
Our very own Josh Carney took to the tape to chart how bad the Steelers’ tackling efforts were on Thursday. And it was not pretty. They missed 14 tackles, and it was everywhere among the linebackers and secondary.
The Bengals were always going to give the Steelers’ defense their best shot on Thursday night. But if you had said one team was 4-1 and the other was 2-4 in that game, the effort on the field would have said the Steelers were the 2-4 team.
The Steelers’ defense had no excuse to look that disinterested in the game. Yes, the Bengals were going to make plays. They have two elite wide receivers in Ja’Marr Chase and Tee Higgins. But to play that badly? No wonder Chris Broussard says the Steelers “aren’t for real.”
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