Bengals Special Teams Gave Pittsburgh 10 Points, and Ruined My Week

The Bengals gave Pittsburgh 10 points on two special teams plays Sunday and lost by three.

Joe Burrow started 14-for-14, the offense scored 27, and the parts that had looked fixed broke again.

Bengals special teams gave Pittsburgh a first down on one punt and the ball at the Cincinnati 14 on another. Zac Taylor did the math himself. “And obviously the muffed punt led to three,” he told reporters. “So that’s 10 points. That’s tough.” The Steelers won 30-27 at Acrisure Stadium, and Cincinnati is 2-1 and 0-1 in the AFC North. Two weeks ago the Houston win felt shaky to me because Burrow kept getting hit. Then Sunday flipped it. The line kept Burrow clean until the last snap that mattered. The defense that held Houston to 60 rushing yards gave up 411. I’ve written about this building before, most recently after November’s 34-12 loss, and this one was different. Acrisure is a tough place to play, and Cincinnati had enough offense to win there anyway. It ruined my week before dinner on Sunday.

Pittsburgh Needed Four Plays to Look Like a Different Team

Aaron Rodgers hit Jaylen Warren for 30 yards on the first snap and Roman Wilson for a 38-yard touchdown on the fourth. Pittsburgh led 7-0 after 1:50, per the official play-by-play. A week earlier the Steelers scored three points in New England, and Rodgers spent his postgame reminding everyone of it. “We put up over 400 yards and 30 points, and it could have been a lot more,” he said. He was right about the last part. Warren’s 87-yard run in the fourth quarter was nullified by a DK Metcalf holding call. Dexter Lawrence also sacked Rodgers twice inside the Cincinnati 20.

Burrow answered the opening score with an 11-play drive and a 3-yard throw to Ja’Marr Chase. Pittsburgh scored again 52 seconds before the quarter ended, Ben Skowronek from 23 yards out. The teams traded field goals. Then Jordan Battle caught a tipped pass from Rodgers with 1:40 left in the half. Burrow found Tee Higgins for 28 yards, and the game was tied 17-17 with 34 seconds left. Burrow’s first 14 passes were complete, per the team’s notes, and I still never felt comfortable. That’s probably the strangest part of the whole afternoon. Cincinnati never led by more than three all day and never trailed by more than seven. It stayed that close because the offense kept answering and the other two units kept making it necessary.

Jaylen Warren Found the Run Defense That Wasn’t There in Houston

Warren ran for 127 on 17 carries by himself, and the Steelers averaged 6.0 a carry as a team, per the box score. Battle said afterward the defense “gave up too many explosives and didn’t get enough guys on the ground.” That is a player admitting to missed tackles in the politest language available.

Taylor said the same thing about the 47-yarder to Washington: “We didn’t get the guy down on the sidelines.” Asked what the defense was missing across 411 yards, he said he didn’t want to pinpoint it until he watched the tape. That’s fair from a coach. From where I sat, nobody could tackle Jaylen Warren, and I didn’t need the tape.

I’ll accept that Rodgers was going to have a day eventually. After watching Houston’s backs get 17 yards on 14 carries, I didn’t have Warren running for 127 on my list of worries.

The two sacks complicate the picture, though. Lawrence got Rodgers at the Cincinnati 18 after the muffed punt and again at the 15 with three minutes left. Both drives ended with Chris Boswell kicking, rather than Pittsburgh scoring seven. Without those two plays, this isn’t a three-point game. With them, Pittsburgh still scored on both possessions. One started at the 14, and the other covered 77 yards behind a 47-yard catch-and-run by Darnell Washington. Taylor said Rodgers “hit some RPOs early in the game, got it out quick” and “did a good job buying time when he needed to.” Derrick Harmon, who ended the game, said the same about Burrow until the two-minute drill. Rodgers got to do it for three quarters.

Bengals Special Teams Turned a 20-17 Lead Into 24-20

The first mistake came with Cincinnati ahead 20-17 in the third quarter. Pittsburgh faced fourth-and-6 at its own 41, Cameron Johnston punted to the Cincinnati 6, and Cedric Johnson ran into him. You can’t do that on fourth-and-6 in Pittsburgh. You just can’t. The flag, logged as roughing the kicker, moved the ball to the Cincinnati 44 with a fresh set of downs. Cincinnati would have taken over at its own 6. Seven plays later, Rodgers hit Metcalf on third-and-2 for a touchdown. Johnson had two sacks in Houston. One penalty in Pittsburgh cost more than both of those earned.

The second came with 11:04 left and the Bengals up 27-24. Johnston’s punt hit Ke’Shawn Williams, bounced at the 16 and ended up under Skowronek at the Cincinnati 14. You have to catch that ball. Lawrence’s sack kept it to a 36-yard Boswell field goal, but that still tied it at 27 with 8:45 left. Two plays, 10 points. A Bengals special teams group that helped win the first two games handed back a lead twice in one afternoon.

Burrow refused to pin it on them, at least in public. “Guys are going to make mistakes and you got to try to overcome it,” he said. “That’s what great football teams do.” He’s right, and it’s still 10 points.

The Offense Was Not the Problem, With One Exception

Burrow finished 28 of 37 for 282 yards and three touchdowns, no interceptions, one sack. Chase caught nine for 98 and a score and passed 7,000 career receiving yards in his 81st game. Higgins caught six for 90 and the tying touchdown. Mike Gesicki’s 25-yard catch on fourth-and-2 put Cincinnati up 27-24 with 13:29 left. Evan McPherson made both his kicks and has hit 20 straight. Burrow’s own review: “I thought we were pretty dang good.” He also named the part that wasn’t. “A couple things procedurally that we got to clean up that put us behind the eight ball a little bit,” he said. The third-quarter drive that settled for a field goal had two false starts. Ted Karras jumped at the Cincinnati 34 and Amarius Mims at the Pittsburgh 15. That’s the eight ball.

Chase Brown got 13 carries for 61 yards, 4.7 yards per carry, and the Bengals ran it 18 times all day. Still, I’d have liked more of him. I’d also have liked to see what the offense did with the ball after the tying field goal. Williams returned the kickoff 34 yards to the Cincinnati 41, the best field position of the quarter. The offense went incomplete, 8 yards to Higgins, incomplete, punt. Pittsburgh then took the punt and went 77 yards for the lead. That three-and-out is the offense’s one real failure, and it came at the worst possible time.

The Last Play Was the First Sack

Boswell’s 33-yarder put Pittsburgh up 30-27 with 2:15 left. Cincinnati called a timeout before its first snap, and Taylor’s explanation afterward was blunt. “Procedurally we were not very good right there,” he said. “We were not very good fourth quarter.”

Burrow got the ball at his 30 with 2:08. Chase for 17, Brown for minus-4, Gesicki for 6, then Chase for 13 to the Pittsburgh 38 with 58 seconds left. Taylor said they were “right at the 38, trying to go score and win, not trying to kick a field goal.” On the next snap Harmon got home and the ball came out. Sebastian Joseph-Day recovered at the Cincinnati 49 with 53 seconds left. Then Rodgers kneeled twice. The line had kept Burrow upright for 37 pass attempts. The one sack it allowed ended the game. Two weeks ago I said I’d be watching the first five Pittsburgh pass rushes. Burrow got up from all of those. It was the last one that got him.

Burrow’s version: “We were trying to take a shot into the end zone. We were in field-goal range, so we’re trying not to take a sack. I was just trying to get the ball out.” Harmon’s version, from the other locker room, is the one I keep thinking about. “He was doing what Joe Flacco did to us last year and just getting the ball out quick,” he said. “And that 2-minute, he started dropping back a little bit more like we anticipated him to do, and we was able to get back to him.”

The Old Questions Came Back Before Jacksonville

The standings make it worse. Cincinnati walked in Sunday at 2-0 and alone in first. Cleveland beat Carolina 21-18, so three AFC North teams sit at 2-1, and Pittsburgh holds the head-to-head tiebreaker over Cincinnati. Baltimore was 1-1 going into Sunday night against Dallas with a chance to make it four. Win at Acrisure and the Bengals are 3-0, a full game clear of everybody, with the tiebreaker over Pittsburgh in their pocket. Instead they are one of three, maybe four, and the only one that lost a division game to get there. “We wanted to be 3-0,” Taylor said. Same.

Jacksonville comes to Paycor Stadium on Sunday, Oct. 4, at 1 p.m. on CBS, per the team’s schedule. Taylor’s summary afterward was the one I’d have used. “Some games you just go get your butt kicked and there’s not much to say about it,” he said. “But this one, we had our chances and Pittsburgh took advantage of theirs and we didn’t take advantage of ours.” Burrow needed fewer words. Asked to assess the team, he said, “Not good enough. Not good enough.” Asked the most frustrating part: “Yeah, we lost.”

It’s also the kind of loss I’ll hear about. There is a Steelers fan in my family, and the standing rule is that Steelers fans are not allowed in the house. The backyard, maybe. This week the backyard feels generous.

Where I Am With This Team

Here’s where I am with this team. I’ve been a Bengals fan since a kid handed me a Kenny Anderson card on a first-grade playground. This team has been giving me anxiety for roughly that long. If you’d told me in August they’d be 2-1 after three games, I’d have taken it. Tell me they were 2-0 with Pittsburgh beatable on the road and gave the third one away, and I’m a lot less happy.

Then a reporter asked Burrow whether the self-inflicted mistakes had become a theme. “Yeah, that’s been a theme for a while,” he said. Asked what fixes it: “Guys got to take ownership of their roles, got to take ownership of themselves.” That is the quarterback telling you the problem isn’t the scheme.

I still think this team is better than what it showed Sunday, and two clean weeks had me thinking the theme was over. Sunday was the theme. “I think we have a chance to be great, but we got to go and prove it,” Burrow said. “We got to go and show it every day. And today we didn’t.”

So here’s the first thing I’m watching against Jacksonville: the first punt Williams has to field. We need him and the rest of the Bengals special teams to get back on track. This L was on them today.