By The Athletic NFL Staff
2h ago
By Paul Dehner, Mike DeFabo and Cale Clinton
The Cincinnati Bengals capped off their late-season, five-game win streak by eking out a 19-17 victory over the Pittsburgh Steelers on Saturday night. The Bengals (9-8) now will await results from the Miami Dolphins and Denver Broncos on Sunday to determine their postseason fate.
The Steelers (10-7), meanwhile, will enter the playoffs with four straight losses, scoring fewer than 20 points in each. The Bengals held Pittsburgh to 193 total yards, the fewest allowed by Cincinnati since Week 16 of 2017.
The Bengals offense continued to run through Joe Burrow and Ja’Marr Chase, as Burrow finished the night 37-for-46 for 277 yards, a touchdown and an interception, while Chase finished with 96 yards and a touchdown on 10 catches.
The real standout performance, however, came from Cincinnati’s defense. The Bengals held the Steelers to 4-of-12 on third-down conversions, including game-sealing third- and fourth-down stops on the final drive of the game. Trey Hendrickson finished the night with 3.5 of the Bengals’ four sacks and five of the Bengals’ eight quarterback hits.
3.5 sacks tonight. 17.5 sacks on the season.
Trey Hendrickson was a BEAST for the @Bengals 💪 pic.twitter.com/Ul2vloeM85
— NFL (@NFL) January 5, 2025
The Steelers’ offense was rife with miscommunication and poor execution. Russell Wilson (17-for-31 passing, 148 yards, one touchdown) made a crucial mistake in the waning minute of the game, electing to scramble instead of throwing the ball away, burning 22 seconds off in the process. George Pickens finished the night with just one catch on six targets for zero yards, dropping three of those targets. Late in the first half, on a crucial fourth-and-1 near midfield, the Steelers called up a play for Jaylen Warren instead of Najee Harris. The play was stuffed, and Cincinnati scored a field goal on the next possession.
Pittsburgh finished the night with its second-fewest yards of the season. This comes against a Bengals team that, just over a month ago, allowed 44 points and over 500 yards to the Steelers.
Cincinnati goes to bed still alive
After starting the season 4-8, the Bengals have a chance on the last day of the regular season. Their victory against Pittsburgh sets up an afternoon watching and hoping Carson Wentz and the Kansas City Chiefs can beat the Broncos and Aaron Rodgers and the New York Jets can upset the Dolphins. If those two things happen, the team that nobody in the AFC wants to play right now will sneak into the postseason. It will be hard to sit and watch for Bengals players and staff knowing that if one of those heartbreaking defeats early in the season had gone their way they would already be in the playoffs.
At the very least, this late push will go a long way to building momentum and upward trending player evaluations during a busy offseason. At most, it could make all the fans in Buffalo quite nervous. — Paul Dehner, Cincinnati Bengals beat writer
Bengals defense keeps the season alive
The Bengals defense tied a bow around their late-season transformation. After giving up 44 points against the Steelers in the first meeting, on Dec. 1, it held Pittsburgh to seven points. Cincinnati allowed 264 yards after the catch in the first game but only allowed those 193 total yards on Saturday and had the home crowd booing Pittsburgh’s offense all night. The defense then made two critical stops late in the game to put it away after the offense and special teams put them in tough spots.
Over the last five weeks, the unit have come a long way while featuring a number of young players. If the Bengals find a way to sneak into the playoffs, this will be yet another injection of confidence on the defensive side of the ball that if they can find enough stops, Burrow can win games — something they didn’t come remotely close to doing during the majority of the season. — Dehner
Where has the Steelers offense gone?
The Steelers’ offense produced its most explosive outing of the season the first time these teams met. In a career with nearly 200 starts, Wilson racked up the second-most passing yards (414) and the Steelers’ offense tallied 37 points in Week 13. At the time, it looked like Pittsburgh finally had an offense to complement the league’s highest-paid defense.
In Round 2, the Steelers’ offense looked very little like it did on Dec. 1. With 11:02 remaining, Wilson had completed just 5-of-12 passes for 51 yards. The Steelers were 2-for-7 on third down at the time. With a little luck, the Steelers rallied to cut the Bengals’ lead to a field goal and had a shot at the very end to drive for the winning score. But the late rally fell short. The offensive product the Steelers put on the field against one of the leagues’ worst defenses doesn’t instill a lot of hope that Wilson and company can stand toe-to-toe with the league’s elite offenses. — Mike DeFabo, Pittsburgh Steelers beat writer
Steelers defense looks average against elite QB
If there’s a positive for the Steelers, it’s that they largely cleaned up the miscommunications that have plagued them over the last month. Rarely were receivers schemed wide open the way they were during three previous losses.
However, that’s not to say the defense played well.
It surrendered a pair of scoring drives, allowing the Bengals to jump out to a 10-0 lead. The final score could have been more lopsided had the Bengals capitalized in the red zone more often. While the Steelers defense has been dominant against lesser quarterbacks, it will have its hands full against high-end quarterbacks in the playoffs. — DeFabo
Required reading
- NFL Week 18 roundtable: Should league’s playoff format change? Is Burrow’s MVP case legit?
- Bengals defense has looked better, but how much progress has it actually made?
- Russini’s what I’m hearing: All the coaching buzz, from Pierce to Vrabel, McCarthy to Mayo
(Photo: Joe Sargent / Getty Images)
