In the Week 7 edition of “Thursday Night Football,” the Cincinnati Bengals play host to the division rival Pittsburgh Steelers.
Cincinnati has lost four in a row since starting the season 2-0. The Bengals last week traded for Joe Flacco, who got the start last week against the Green Bay Packers but wasn’t able to pull Cincy out of its slide. They need to start stacking wins, quickly, if they want to salvage their season and still be in contention if and when Joe Burrow is able to return to the lineup.
Pittsburgh, meanwhile, is riding high with a 4-1 record and sits atop the AFC North with several games’ worth of cushion. The Steelers came out of their bye and rather easily dispatched the Browns, and they’re set up here to extend their division lead even further. The schedule toughens up a bit after this, so it’s important to capture the victory before that happens.
Will the Steelers continue to roll, or will the Bengals finally get back in the win column? We’ll find out soon enough. But before we break down the matchup, let’s take a look at how you can watch the game.
Where to watch Bengals vs. Steelers live
Bet NFL Week 7 games at DraftKings Sportsbook, where new users get $300 in bonus bets and three free months of NBA League Pass.
When the Steelers have the ball
Did you know that the Steelers are 29th in the NFL in yards per game? Look it up, it’s true.
They’re 14th in scoring because they have the third-best average starting field position in the NFL and have rarely turned the ball over (only 5.7% of their possessions, per Pro-Football-Reference), but the underlying metrics on their offense aren’t all that encouraging.
They’re 30th in plays per drive and 28th in yards per drive. They’re 22nd in success rate, via TruMedia, 20th in negative play rate and 25th in the share of plays that gained 10 or more yards. They’re 20th in third-down conversion rate and don’t go for it on fourth downs. They’ve only kicked nine total field goals.
So how on earth are they scoring? Some of it is just the Jets game in Week 1 skewing things. They’ve scored a touchdown on just 21.4% of their possessions over their last four games after doing so on four of their 10 non-kneeling trips in the opener. They also have five scoring drives (three of which resulted in touchdowns) that started in opposing territory.
And yet! They’re about to play the Bengals, who might have the worst defense in the NFL, and might be without their best defensive player in Trey Hendrickson. Cincinnati is 31st in yards allowed per game and 30th in points allowed per game. The Bengals are 30th in both EPA per play against and opponents’ success rate. Opponents have scored touchdowns at the league’s third-highest rate and punted at the 10th-lowest. They don’t do anything well: They’re 30th against the pass and 25th against the run.
In other words, this Steelers offense probably doesn’t need to be good in order to move the ball on Thursday night. They just need to not shoot themselves in the foot with turnovers, and that has been the single-biggest strength of this offense this season. Aaron Rodgers still takes care of the ball, and that shouldn’t change against a defense that doesn’t have much ammo when it comes to forcing takeaways.
Pittsburgh can get some stuff going with DK Metcalf in the passing game, and everyone runs it with success against the Bengals, so Jaylen Warren and Kenneth Gainwell should be able to find some running room as well. The Steelers might not light up the scoreboard here, but they’re also probably not going to struggle all that badly because the Bengals don’t force anyone to struggle. A solid-ish offensive performance with a few short-ish scoring drives seems likely.
When the Bengals have the ball
On the surface, it might seem as though Joe Flacco breathed some life into the Cincinnati offense given that the Bengals were within one score of the Packers for a brief time in the fourth quarter, but the reality is that wasn’t really the case.
The Bengals were scoreless until the last five minutes of the third quarter. They also totaled just 268 yards of offense. Flacco averaged a pathetic 4.9 yards per pass attempt and the rushing “attack” generated 55 yards on 16 carries. Cincinnati really did not do much of anything offensively and mostly scored some garbage-time points and never threatened to actually win the game.
Still, it was a marked improvement over previous weeks with Jake Browning at the helm — mostly because Flacco managed to get out of the game without any turnovers. But that’s actually out of character for him. He threw six interceptions in his four starts for the Browns this season, seven in his six starts in Indianapolis last season and eight in his five starts for the Browns the year before. He is a turnover machine. He just happened to not turn it over on Sunday.
The Steelers, meanwhile, have forced turnovers on 18.4% of their opponents’ possessions, according to Pro-Football-Reference. That’s the third-highest turnover rate in the league. Some of that is skewed by an incredible five-turnover performance by the Patriots, but they also forced five total turnovers in their three other pre-bye games. They’re coming off their first game of the season without a takeaway, but Flacco is always ripe for an interception. It wouldn’t be surprising if the Steelers turned him over here.
Will Ja’Marr Chase and Tee Higgins be able to get theirs on occasion against Joey Porter Jr. and Darius Slay on the outside? Probably. They’re that good, and Flacco has a strong arm and is willing to fire the ball to anywhere on the field. But Flacco is also a sitting duck in the pocket and will still be working behind one of the weakest offensive lines in the league. It’s not going to be easy for the Bengals to move the ball through the air.
Cincinnati, meanwhile, is just a dreadful rushing offense. Chase Brown is averaging 2.7 yards per carry on the season. His runs are yielding only 0.45 yards before contact, on average, which ranks 34th out of the 37 players with 50-plus carries this season. His yards after contact per carry average (2.28) actually ranks 36th among that same group of players, so it’s not like he’s doing much to overcome the poor blocking he’s getting up front. The Steelers are yielding 4.1 yards per carry, but the idea of the Bengals suddenly becoming a team that can successfully run the ball seems outside the realm of possibility here.
Prediction
Pittsburgh doesn’t really have the profile of a 5-1 team given the talent level on both sides of the ball, but the schedule has broken in such a way that it feels like it’s going to happen. (The Steelers got the Jets in Week 1, the Carson Wentz-led Vikings in Week 4, the Browns in Week 6 and now the Burrow-less Bengals in Week 7.) The Bengals don’t have enough juice on either side of the ball to pull off the upset here.
Prediction: Steelers 21, Bengals 16
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