This rivalry does not move the needle like Steelers-Ravens or have the proximity and history of Steelers-Browns. Heck, the Ravens quickly became one of the Steelers’ biggest rivals because they were the Browns before Art Modell moved the team to Baltimore—and became less welcome in Cleveland than Terrible Towels.
So where does the Steelers-Bengals rivalry fit when assessing Pittsburgh’s AFC North foes?
It doesn’t label easily but there is no question the rivalry crackles like a raging fire. Nothing reinforced that more than when the teams met in Cincinnati in December of 2015.
The two teams nearly got into it during pre-game warm-ups at Paul Brown Stadium. On the first series of the game Steelers wide receiver Antonio Brown and Bengals cornerback Dre Kirkpatrick had to be separated after slapping at one another at the end of a play.
Pushing and shoving persisted throughout the contentious game and spilled over after the Steelers had beaten the Bengals 33–20.
Cincinnati left tackle Andrew Whitworth called out the NFL for not taking action against Vince Williams over a perceived threat the Steelers linebacker made against Bengals linebacker Vontaze Burfict after the rivals’ first meeting of the season.
Steelers right tackle Marcus Gilbert took to Twitter to call out the Bengals for being all talk and state his hope that the teams would meet for a third time that season in the playoffs.
They did and what transpired during one of the wildest playoff wins in Steelers history made the contentious meeting between the rivals less than a month earlier seem like a pillow fight.
Consider that a Steelers assistant coach received an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty after getting into a shoving match with Bengals safety Reggie Nelson on Pittsburgh’s sideline. The Mike Munchak–Nelson exchange had been reduced to a footnote by the end of the night because of what happened after the Steelers squandered a 15-point lead and then won 18–16 when rookie Chris Boswell kicked a 35-yard field goal in the waning seconds of the game.
Roethlisberger left the game at the end of the third quarter with a shoulder injury and Bengals fans rained down boos on him as he left the field for the Steelers’ locker room. It looked like Roethlisberger and the Steelers were finished when backup quarterback Landry Jones threw an interception with less than two minutes left in the game and the Bengals leading by a point.
But then Bengals running back Jeremy Hill inexplicably tried fighting for extra yardage without two arms guarding the football as if it were precious cargo and linebacker Ryan Shazier forced a fumble that the Steelers recovered deep in their own territory.
“Ben and I have been together for nine years,” Steelers coach Mike Tomlin said after the game. “We kind of looked at each other and said now or never.”
Roethlisberger re-entered the game with a bad shoulder that prevented him from making deep throws. Fortunately for the Steelers, Burfict decided it was time to stake his claim to player of the game for each team.
Burfict had knocked Roethlisberger out of the game with his third-quarter sack and then made the interception that appeared to deliver Bengals coach Marvin Lewis’ first postseason win.
But with the Steelers on the Bengals’ 47-yard line and just 22 seconds left to play, the game turned on an incomplete pass. Roethlisberger’s pass sailed past Antonio Brown but Burfict leveled the Steelers’ wideout in the head with a running shoulder hit.
That drew a 15-yard penalty for unnecessary roughness, and the Bengals gave the Steelers another gift when cornerback Adam Jones was flagged for unsportsmanlike conduct for bumping a referee.
Tomlin wasted little time sending out Boswell, the Steelers’ unsung hero in 2015, for the game-winning field goal. His kick split the uprights, leaving the Bengals an entire off-season to chew on their most dispiriting loss to the despised Steelers in franchise history.
Days after the improbable turn of events in Cincinnati it was still hard to make sense of the ending. Jones made the absurd claim that Brown had been faking his injury after the Burfict hit. He issued a public apology to Brown after the latter could not play the following week against the Broncos because of a concussion, and Burfict was later suspended by the NFL for the first three regular-season games of 2016.
If I am Roger Goodell I have video copies of the Burfict hit on standby for anyone who gripes about the NFL commissioner trying to turn the game into flag football with his player safety initiatives.
That play is Exhibit A for why Goodell needs to protect the players from themselves.
Burfict was clearly trying to take Brown out of the game—and he tried to find some loophole that allows for a shoulder instead of a helmet to blow up a defenseless player.
The 2015 season might have changed the dynamics of the Steelers’ AFC North rivalries. The Browns are the definition of a hot mess and have not been consistently competitive against the Steelers since the NFL returned to Cleveland in 1999.
The Bengals, meanwhile, have been ready to win for years now but have yet to prove they can go through the Steelers or other perennial contenders in the AFC.
Has Steelers-Bengals surpassed Steelers-Browns as Pittsburgh’s second-most contentious rivalry? Stay tuned.
Love Still Conquers All
Bee Huss made an appearance in the first chapter of the book with her toast at the Steelers’ tailgate I visited. She is, to recap, an avowed Browns hater who happens to be married to a Bengals fan. I wondered if the Steelers 18–16 win over the Bengals in the 2016 AFC playoffs had caused any friction between Bee and her husband, Matt, and I am happy to report it did not.
Bee, who lives outside of Toledo, Ohio, did not attend the game because of a cold as well as her concern that it might get a little ugly for Steelers fans at Paul Brown Stadium if Pittsburgh beat Cincinnati.
Matt Huss went to the game and he and Bee talked about it afterward but they have too much of a foundation after almost 30 years of marriage to let it come between them.
“We’re used to it,” Bee said of a mixed marriage when it comes to the AFC North. “It’s never mean or nasty or anything like that. He says, ‘When is it going to be our time? I’d be happy with winning one Super Bowl.’”