PITTSBURGH — The autumn equinox was a few days prior, but Sunday might have shown us an eclipse at Heinz Field.
Bengals quarterback Joe Burrow, in his second season after winning the national championship, securing the Heisman Trophy and being the No. 1 pick, was much better than the 39-year-old, 18-year veteran on the other side in a 24-10 win for Cincinnati, which hadn’t won in its last five tries here. But the Bengals now have beaten the Steelers twice in a row — in different stadiums, with different quarterbacks — and what was once a sizable gap between these two clubs clearly is closing fast.
Much of it can be attributed to the quarterbacks, at least on this otherwise sunny afternoon. Burrow, who was battered and bewildered by the Steelers defense last year when he came to town as a rookie, completed 14 of 18 passes for just 172 yards, but also three touchdowns to one interception.
Ben Roethlisberger, on the other hand, was 38 of 58 for 318 yards, one score and two picks. (More on that later.) He was also hurt by several drops from his pass catchers and sacked four times behind an offensive line that continues to be overwhelmed both in run-blocking and pass-protection.
A Steelers defense playing without starting pass rushers T.J. Watt and Alex Highsmith failed to register a sack in a regular season game for the first time since Week 7 of 2016. That 75-game streak was an NFL record, but also included two playoff losses to the Jaguars and Browns. Sunday’s loss to the Bengals will feel nearly as dire to some fans as the Steelers fall to 1-2 without much cause for optimism — even Chris Boswell missed a 42-yard field goal after starting 53 for 53 on all kicks against Cincinnati in his career.
It was over when: Roethlisberger kindly placed the ball directly into the stomach of Bengals linebacker Logan Wilson on a 3rd-and-4 throw, then Joe Burrow turned around and tossed a 9-yard touchdown to Chase three plays later. That made it 24-7 with 6:18 left in the third quarter, but it was about as deflating a sequence as you could imagine from the Steelers at that point in the game. “The only thing I can say is that he didn't see him,” color analyst Trent Green, a former quarterback himself, said on the CBS broadcast. “Because he was right in front of him.”
Player of the game: Chase looked like a star who’s going to torment the Steelers — and Ravens and Browns — for years to come. There was no shortage of second-guessing by fans when the Bengals picked him fifth overall this year instead of a left tackle to protect Burrow, but Chase now has a touchdown reception of 30-plus yards in each of his first three games. On his first, a 34-yarder, he simply ran past second-year outside cornerback James Pierre and showed the common difference between a top-five pick and an undrafted guy. All told, Chase finished with four catches for 65 yards and two scores, but he burned a defense that was on high-alert after yielding a deep-ball touchdown to the Raiders and Henry Ruggs last week.
Trending up: We’re picking Najee Harris for a second straight week. The rookie running back continues to be this team’s only source of offense at times, and while he keeps struggling to find running room on the ground, he’s adding yardage through the passing game the way Le’Veon Bell used to do here. Who would’ve thought his first 100-yard game in the NFL would be through the air, as opposed to on the ground? Harris rushed for only 40 yards on 14 carries, just 2.9 per carry and half coming on one run, but he also logged a staggering 14 catches for 102 yards on 19 targets. And that was with a few drops. If the rest of this group can ever come together, Harris can actually be a weapon with some semblance of efficiency beyond a human safety valve who then becomes a human punching bag for the defense.
Trending down: How can you pick anyone but Roethlisberger? When he wasn’t throwing interceptions or making odd decisions, he was running into sacks, missing his targets or getting his wideouts plastered. Perhaps he was having trouble with the left pectoral injury that limited him in practice this week or sorely missing favorite target Diontae Johnson, but either way, Roethlisberger lost to the Bengals for the first time since 2015. And it happened in miserable fashion. To add injury to insult, he lost his second-favorite target, JuJu Smith-Schuster, to a ribs injury midway through the third quarter.
Next up: A trip to Lambeau Field to face Aaron Rodgers and the Packers, who will be coming off a Sunday night visit to San Francisco.
