I just rewatched the Pittsburgh game

[derekshank]

After the bye week, I felt a need to get a Bengals fix, so put on a couple games on DVD (thanks Big-O). The Texans game depressed me with how badly we played, the Packers game depressed me with the hang-over our offense had from the Steelers loss, and then for some reason felt the urge to revisit the horrible Steelers game... (maybe it was because a couple of the other games depressed me so much)…

...and it wasn't nearly as bad as I remembered. We owned them for the entire first half. I remembered the defense getting chewed up by Parker and Bettis, but the defense held it's own as long as you could expect. Our offense just put them in a bad position way too many times.

We held them to 7 in the first half, and our offense moved the ball with a fair amount of ease. It was mistakes that kept us from having a huge lead in the first half.

So, in the 2nd half, I was waiting for it to all fall apart... and it didn't nearly as quickly as I expected. Until the 4th quarter, we were still in that game despite multiple mistakes.

Ben threw an INT with their first possession. Our offense in turn threw and INT that gave them the ball on our 15... and we held them to a FG!

We promptly threw another INT, that gave them the ball in Bengals territory, and our rookie LB just made a bad play that resulted in a TD. (A mistake that he has already seemed to learn from watching the GB and Bal games… otherwise, I’m confident they would have only gotten another FG.)

Then we went 3-and-out, giving them the ball on the 40 yard-line, and Pittsburgh had it’s 2nd decent drive of the day… but by late in the 3rd quarter, it is expected that a team as good as Pittsburgh will have a couple decent drives.

And despite how frustrating it was to watch Bettis and Parker get 5 yards every 1st down... we played very strong on 2nd downs... If our offense had shown up at all in the 2nd half, I think we would have won.

The point is, even though it was demoralizing at the time... watching it again gave me a great amount of confidence that we will beat them next time. Our offense has already shown that it is making fewer mistakes... and watching the Baltimore game, I was very pleased with how we adapted to their pass rush in the 2nd quarter.

All in all, even though we lost that game (and should have) I felt like we were more dominant than them, but we beat ourselves. I really believe we are the better team... and I don't feel like too much of a homer saying that.

[Stripes]

You make plenty of good points, and I want so much to agree, but I cannot bring myself to build any hope for this game. Last time I did that, the result was 27-13. I'll just let things play out (as if I have any choice) and see what happens.

[NYBengalfan]

Good post. I felt that our Offense did move the ball very easily on them in the 1st half. But our problem was that we did not finish drives. I think that if we got at least one touchdown on the first two drives the outcome would have been a whole lot different.

[Stripes]

I don't really think the outcome would have changed all that much if we'd have gotten an early touchdown. The Steelers were the better team on that Sunday. The run defense has looked better of late, hopefully not because of the poor competition. If it has improved, and the offense plays more fluid football, then sure we have a great chance of stealing the victory.

[tibor75]

yawn. More pathetic excuses.

they won. We lost. Get over it. we sucked that day.