The punchline on the the Bengals messups is really no one of them lost them the game, it was a combo. The fumble gave the ball to the Steelers on their 10, and anybody think the Bengals should have kneeled isn’t doing math, they were in long field goal range in the rain and the Steelers had 3 timeouts, they needed to move the ball to at least make it a doable FG. The Burdict hit would have put them in 49 to 50 yard field goal range, again in the rain, easily missable. And really I’m not sure the Burdict hit was deliberate, a guy is responsible for his hits, but having seen a lot of those hits get flags in the last few years I’m not really sure what the player is supposed to do, I don’t think there was any way for him to not hit Brown in the head. It was the icing of Jones’ penalty that moved the FG to makable. There’s the big dumb.
As a non-rah rah Steeler fan, I see the Steelers choking it in the first half. When your defense hold a team to 2 first down in 30 minutes and you only get 6 points in that same half there’s a long list of missed opportunities. Then in the second half the offense didn’t get any better (2 3rd down conversions in the whole game) and the defense started getting soft. The Bengals drove a LOT in the 2nd half, Steelers got some lucky turnover to end drives but it was getting ugly from the first possession. And lots of undisciplined play throughout the game for the Steelers, with the Bengals having the spectacular lack of discipline in the end, but the Steelers took 142 yards of penalties and most of them were 15 yard “acting the ass” penalties, I mean hell one of our COACHES took a 15 yarder for being an ass.
If the Bengals win that the talk of the day is how the Steelers blew it. They played poorly and behaved stupidly through the whole game.
Steelers play Denver, remember when Tebow and the Broncos defeated Pittsburgh in overtime about 3-4 years ago? I think, therefore, Pittsburgh goes on to get revenge; and I’m no Steelers or Broncos fan.