CINCINNATI — Joe Burrow has played games without Ja’Marr Chase. And Chase has played games without Burrow. But Saturday at Pittsburgh will mark the first time since Chase entered the league that the Cincinnati Bengals have played a game without either one of them.
“You always want your best players to be available, but that’s just life,” Bengals head coach Zac Taylor said about going into a key AFC North Division road game with playoff implications on the line.
The absences of Burrow and Chase are major. The adjustments will be minor, Taylor said. Beyond the other receivers getting more snaps, the Bengals are not looking for anything different out of them.
“Nothing new,” Taylor said. “Just play within themselves, and we try to do a good job with the scheme and help everybody out.”
Cincinnati Bengals vs. Pittsburgh Steelers Preview
The Bengals have won three in a row to improve to 8-6 and reestablish themselves as a playoff contender. The Steelers have lost three in a row and are on the brink at 7-7.
This will be the third consecutive game for the Bengals where both teams are using backup quarterbacks, and the second in a row where the opponent is going deeper on the depth chart after benching their signal caller.
Pittsburgh head coach Mike Tomlin is turning to Mason Rudolph after Mitch Trubisky has gone 0-2 in relief of Kenny Pickett, who remains out with an ankle injury.
The longest active win streaks in Dec/Jan regular season games:
Bills 11
49ers 11#Bengals 8
Buccaneers 3— Jay Morrison (@ByJayMorrison)
Jake Browning’s NFL starting debut came four weeks ago against the Steelers and resulted in a 16-10 loss at Paycor Stadium. He’s gone 3-0 since while putting up historic numbers for a quarterback in his first month of starting.
“I think having a little bit of success under your belt helps confidence and having a week or a couple weeks of feeling like your preparation was where you wanted it to be, and being able to replicate that kind of went into that,” Browning said.
“In the Pittsburgh game the first time, I really wanted to like operate well in the huddle, so I was really practicing making sure I was spitting out play calls clean and didn’t want to have anything like, just unprofessional happen where you’re stuck in the huddle and can’t spit out the play call,” he continued.
“So I feel more confident with stuff like that after a couple games. And so now you can really focus on the different looks and going through your reads and stuff like that.”
5 Bengals-Steelers Stats From Inside Edge
- Bengals wide receivers have 41 receiving touchdowns since the start of 2022 — tied for the most in the league.
- The Steelers have allowed 49 receiving touchdowns in that time — fifth most in the league.
Analysis: This is a surprising stat given how good the Pittsburgh defense has been, especially the pash rush, which often keeps the opponent from taking deeper shots.
Without Chase, the onus will be on Tee Higgins, Tyler Boyd, Andrei Iosivas, and Trenton Irwin to keep the trend going. And they’ll attempt to do so against a Steelers defense that will be missing its top three safeties with Minkah Fitzpatrick and Trenton Thompson injured and Damontae Kazee suspended for the rest of the year.
- The Steelers have rushed for 10 or more yards on 12.6% of their 302 carries this season — tied for fourth best in the NFL.
- The Bengals have allowed 10+ yards on 11.9 percent of carries by running backs — tied for third worst in the league.
Analysis: It’s not a good week to be faced with this disparity with the Bengals preparing for life without defensive tackle DJ Reader for the rest of the season.
Look for the Steelers to lean heavily into the run game. Part of that will be attacking Reader’s absence, and part will be an attempt to take some pressure off quarterback Mason Rudolph, who will be making his first start of the season and just the third since 2019.
The Steelers ran for 153 yards in the Week 12 meeting, but only three of their 33 carries went for 10+ yards.
- The Steelers are 1-5 (.167) when throwing at least one interception this season — tied for seventh worst in the league.
- The Bengals have intercepted 15 passes this season — tied for third in the league.
Analysis: In Rudolph’s only season as a regular starter in 2019, he threw nine interceptions in eight starts.
The Bengals have won six of their last seven games when they’ve had at least one interception, and they are 13-5 dating back to the start of 2022.
Cam Taylor-Britt leads the team with four, but he will miss his fourth consecutive game with a quad injury, and the Bengals will be thin in the secondary with rookie DJ Ivey going down with a season-ending ACL injury last week.
But in each of the last two weeks the Bengals have gotten interceptions directly off pressure, as Trey Hendrickson hits have resulted in defensive tackle B.J. Hill recording the first two regular-season picks of his career.
- The Bengals are 5-0 when possessing the ball longer than their opponent this season — best in the league.
- The Steelers have allowed an average time of possession of 33 minutes and 26 seconds — seventh worst in the league.
Analysis: While Cincinnati’s success rate has been high when leading in time of possession, the occurrences of it are down. The Bengals did it 21 times in 2021-22 but just four times so far in 2023. Those four games were the victories against the Los Angeles Rams, Arizona Cardinals, Buffalo Bills and San Francisco 49ers.
A big reason the Steelers have been so bad at possessing the ball is that they struggled to keep drives alive with one of the worst offenses in the league. In the only two games where they’ve led time of possession, they’ve barely done so, outpacing the Raiders in Week 3 by six seconds and the Packers in Week 10 by 66 seconds.
In the Week 12 meeting, the Steelers held a 14:34 edge in time of possession, which was their season high and their second highest since 2017.
- Games involving the Steelers have gone under in all seven of their games against bottom-10 pass defenses since 2022.
Analysis: This seems like a strange number because playing bad pass defenses typically would lead to better chances to score and have the game hit the over, but the Pittsburgh offense is so bad that it doesn’t matter where the opponent ranks.
MORE: What Will Ja’Marr Chase’s Absence Mean for Tee Higgins and the Bengals’ Offense?
In this case, the Bengals rank 27th in pass defense and have been in the bottom 10 most of the year. So Pittsburgh’s 16-10 win Week 12 is one of the seven games. The over/under number for today is 38.
The over has hit in the last four Bengals’ games and five of the last six. So this is a classic case of something has to give.
Bengals vs. Steelers Predictions
- Adam Beasley: Bengals
- David Bearman: Bengals
- Dalton Miller: Bengals
- Dallas Robinson: Bengals
- Jay Morrison: Bengals
Be sure to check out all of PFN’s Week 16 predictions.
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