The Steelers are riding high after a two-score victory over the Browns in Week 6. Following the win, they hold a 2.5-game lead in the AFC North and control their destiny, as the rest of the AFC North hasn’t managed a win since the Browns beat the Packers in Week 3.
While the Steelers have built up momentum, Thursday games have been a challenge for the Steelers under Mike Tomlin. Pittsburgh is 9-10 overall on Thursday nights, and 2-8 on the road.
What do the Steelers need to do to avoid a Thursday night
disappointment?
What to expect from the Bengals’ offense
Rushing YPG: 56.7 (32nd)
Passing YPG: 178.5 (30th)
PPG: 17.2 (29th)
RP: Unless you’re a new fan, you already have a good idea of what to expect from the Bengals. The premise of their team has been the same since they drafted quarterback Joe Burrow and receiver Tee Higgins in 2020, and later added Ja’Marr Chase in 2021: throw the pill around the yard.
After their Super Bowl run during the 2021 season, this became even more of a focus as the team let their defensive talent erode in order to prioritize paying their quarterback and star receivers. The idea was simple enough: score enough to make the fluctuating state of their defense irrelevant. Ryland will have more on that in the next section.
However, in recent years, the Bengals have become intimately familiar with the old saying “the road to Hell is paved with good intentions.” Burrow has struggled to stay on the field, and the injury bug has bitten him again in 2025. During the second quarter of the Bengals’ Week 2 contest with Jacksonville, Burrow suffered a brutal toe injury that will reportedly see him miss a minimum of three months.
How quickly the Bengals’ house of cards has collapsed.
The offense was off to a slow start with Burrow, and things have only devolved in his absence. Backup Jake Browning was somehow able to gut out a win against the Jaguars, despite throwing three interceptions, but the Bengals have gone winless since. As you’ll note from the stats above, the Bengals are a bottom-four team in passing, rushing, and points scored. That’s less than ideal for a team that’s structured itself to rely on a supercharged offense.
After three abysmal starts that proved Browning wasn’t up to snuff, the Bengals’ hand was forced. They made a surprising intra-division trade with Cleveland to acquire 40-year-old Joe Flacco, a familiar divisional foe who is now just a Steelers stamp away from completing his own personal AFC North bingo card.
The trade seemingly rankled Mike Tomlin, but considering how Flacco has actually performed in the year 2025, the move amounts to little more than a wet fart.
If we look at passing EPA, Browning (-60.6) ranked 32nd out of 34 qualified passers per NFL Next Gen Stats. And what about Flacco? The Browns failed to eclipse 17 points in any of his four starts, and even if we include his debut with Cincinnati, Flacco’s performance (-68.5) lands right behind Browning and only beats out rookie Cam Ward, who’s languishing in the hapless Titans’ offense. Coincidentally, the Titans were led by former Bengals offensive coordinator Brian Callahan until his firing on Monday. That doesn’t mean much for our purposes, but it still felt worth mentioning.
Not a fan of EPA and want more traditional stats? How about Flacco’s 59.5% completion rate or his four touchdowns versus six interceptions? This year, Flacco has managed to throw for more yards than Browning – 1,034 versus 757 – but even Browning has thrown more touchdowns (6), albeit with more interceptions (8) too.
For what it’s worth, Flacco did look better against the Packers than he or Browning had looked previously this season. The Bengals eclipsed their season average for passing yards (213 net yards) and didn’t turn the ball over, but they still managed only 18 points. Flacco was often under duress behind a shaky line in Cleveland, but the Bengals’ is arguably worse. That likely contributed to his 2.35-second average time to throw and his 5.9 average depth of target on Sunday – Aaron Rodgers has averages 2.51 seconds to throw and an ADoT of 5.8 for the Steelers this season.
It resulted in a mostly unimpressive debut, even if it felt like a small upgrade. The Bengals didn’t push the ball downfield often, as the reel below will show.
So what is it that Flacco provides? Experience and a willingness to push the ball into tight windows. While they haven’t exactly been up to the standards of Flacco’s peak during his Super Bowl MVP days, when you have a couple of thoroughbreds like Chase and Higgins, that at least gives the Bengals a shot on any given Sunday.
And lest you forget, Chase and Higgins are capable of some special things on the football field when conditions are right. Together they account for 47.4% of the Bengals’ targets, though Chase (57 targets, 42 receptions, 468 yards, and 4 TDs) has found better results this year than Higgins (35 targets, 18 receptions, 220 yards, 2 TDs).
For his part, Chase is one of the most explosive receivers in the game, whether it’s creating YAC, operating as a deep threat, or improvising in the scramble drill.
Higgins is no slouch as a deep threat in his own right, and remains one of the best contested catch artists in the game.
However, the support around them is wearing thin.
The Bengals are likely to be without tight ends Mike Gesicki (pectoral injury) and Tanner Hudson (concussion protocol), who both registered DNPs for Monday and Tuesday’s practices. That means the Steelers should see Noah Fant, an athletic former first-round pick (No. 20 overall in 2019), now with his third team and who has yet to produce a season worthy of his lofty draft pedigree.
Elsewhere, Andrei Iosivas has taken a step back this year as Cincinnati’s WR3, but remains third on the team in receiving yards, with 121. Running back Chase Brown is third on the team in targets (24) and has turned that into 102 yards for no scores and just three first downs.
But where Brown has really disappointed is in the rushing game. After seemingly breaking out in 2024 with seven scores and 990 rushing yards on 4.3 YPC, he’s looked indecisive and struggled behind an offensive line that is failing to create any push. Through six games, Brown is averaging just 2.7 YPC for 202 yards and one score. It’s not entirely his fault, as Bengals running backs are averaging just 0.36 yards before contact, which is second-to-last in the league and only besting the Browns.
With the injuries to the tight end room and the subpar offensive line talent, there’s little the Bengals can do to help beef up their running game. Even without Burrow, this is a team that lives in 11 personnel (1 running back, 1 tight end, 3 wide receivers). According to Sumer Sports, the Bengals are using 11 personnel 74.2% of the time, versus 12 personnel (1 RB, 2 TE) 24.0% of the time, and all other groupings at a rate of less than 1%.
That means the Steelers can counter with nickel and dime packages to negate the passing attack most of the day, as long as they can continue to stop the run. The fact that the Steelers are running Cover-3 – a coverage that protects against deep passes while allowing eight defenders to be near the line of scrimmage – at roughly a 35% clip, indicates that this should be a favorable matchup for the Steelers, at least on paper.
They just need the offense to do its part and provide the defense with a lead.
With that in mind, how’s the Bengals’ defense looking, Ryland?
What to expect from the Bengals’ defense
Rushing YPG Allowed: 135.7 (28th)
Passing YPG Allowed: 258.5 (31st)
PPG Allowed: 30.5 (30th)
RB: The Bengals’ defense has been a problem for a while, and that hasn’t changed in 2025. The Bengals are bottom five in almost every metric and are currently giving up over 30 points per game.
To say Cincinnati didn’t at least attempt to patch some holes over the offseason would be disingenuous. They spent three of their top four draft picks on defenders and jettisoned well-regarded coordinator Lou Anarumo, replacing him with Al Golden, who was Notre Dame’s defensive coordinator.
However, while Anarumo, now in Indianapolis, currently has the Colts as the fourth-best scoring defense in the league, the Bengals are once again struggling at the bottom of the pack. The moral of the story is that there’s a talent deficiency on the Cincinnati defense that has yet to be remedied by the team’s front office.
Under Golden, the Bengals haven’t been on the cutting edge of versatility, but they do throw in their fair share of simulated pressures. Golden is more than willing to drop his defensive ends – even a star like Trey Hendrickson – into coverage multiple times a game. He likes to line up five and rush four at the line of scrimmage.
As a result, the Bengals have ways they try to pressure quarterbacks despite having the second-lowest blitz rate in football (16%). However, they also have the third-lowest pressure rate in the league at 27.1%.
On the back end, the Bengals once again can throw in the odd wrinkle, but like the Steelers, they are a Cover-1 and Cover-3 heavy team.
Teams that have seen passing success against the Bengals – that’s pretty much all of them – have heavily used the quick game. That’s also helped minimize Hendrickson, who, despite being a longtime member of the oft-struggling Cincinnati defense, remains one of the league’s top sack-getters (17.5 each in 2023 and ’24; four so far this year).
Per NFL Pro, teams have the fifth-fastest time to throw against the Bengals, and it’s been a successful strategy. Cincinnati is by far the worst defense in the league when it comes to allowing yards after catch. They’ve given up a whopping 999 yards in that department through six weeks this season – 147 more than the second-worst Seattle Seahawks.
The Cincinnati secondary isn’t horrible on paper, with D.J. Turner II, Cam Taylor-Britt, and Dax Hill handling cornerback duties and the less-intimidating duo of Jordan Battle and Geno Stone at safety. Turner, to his credit, turned in an excellent game on Sunday against Green Bay with an incredible five passes defensed. He’s a name to watch.
I’d place the weight of the short-game woes on the Bengals’ inside linebacker group that has struggled this season. They’ve given up a lot of open space in the middle of the field, but also struggled to make tackles after the catch.
The Bengals made a change at the position last week against the Packers, starting rookie Barrett Carter over veteran Logan Wilson. Demetrius Knight Jr., the team’s second-round pick this year, has also been starting, meaning the Bengals now have two rookies on the interior.
The duo had some nice moments against the run last week, but Cincinnati still gave up 153 yards and two touchdowns on the ground in the loss. Their starting defensive line of Joseph Ossai (who had a solid game Sunday), B.J. Hill, T.J. Slaton Jr., and Hendrickson (who hasn’t practiced this week due to injury and could miss Thursday) just isn’t the most imposing unit against the ground game.
The Bengals have struggled against jumbo packages this year – both in the run game and off of play-action fakes.
If you haven’t picked up on the theme by now, this could be a big game for the Steelers’ tight end room.
Over his last two games against the Bengals, Pat Freiermuth has a combined 14 catches for 153 yards and two touchdowns. Jonnu Smith’s athleticism and quick-game specialty match up perfectly against the Bengals’ coverage issues. And Darnell Washington should once again be a valuable bully in the run game, especially when Cincinnati gets cute and brings down a middle linebacker to line up on the edge.
In short, what the Steelers already do on offense lines up pretty well with what they need to do to beat the Bengals’ defense. The short week of Thursday Night Football tends to work in the underdog’s (and home team’s) favor, but the Steelers should be able to score enough points to win if they play to their identity and avoid back-breaking mistakes.
