Steelers Crush Bengals on Monday Night Football, 27-3

The Pittsburgh Steelers won their first match of the season at home against the Bengals, 27-3. Mike Tomlin’s boys were dominant in this Monday Night Football episode and smashed the guests, who are still without a victory in the current campaign.

With a new leader on the field and many new things involved in their gameplan, the Steelers were looking quite good on the Heinz Field. The best players in this one were Mason Rudolph who is replacing Ben Roethlisberger and Jaylen Samuels, the running back who can cover multiple positions on the team.

Rudolph was 24 of 28 tonight, for 229 yards and 2 touchdowns, without an interception or a sack suffered. It appears that he slowly starts to get in the rhythm, and despite the fact that the Bengals might not be the elite opponent, Rudolph is showing improvement.

“Can’t say enough about Mason Rudolph. We gave him a game ball in here, for his first start and win. I thought that was appropriate,” said the Steelers’ head coach Mike Tomlin at the press conference. “We need to learn from this, from positive experiences.”

Meanwhile, Samuels had a superb night in three different roles. He collected 83 yards from scrimmage, and threw the ball three times, all of them successful for 31 yards. In 10 carries, Samuels went for 26 yards and one touchdown, while on 8 receptions he posted 57 yards.

“It’s huge,” Samuels couldn’t hide his thrill following the match. “Coming in 0-3 and coming back, getting a divisional game, that’s huge. We’ve just got to build off this game.”

James Conner was at his usual level, posting one hell of a game. With 125 yards from the scrimmage and a touchdown run which changed the course of the game, Steelers’ RB is showing signs of life.

In the moments when the Bengals had a 3-0 build up in the first period, Conner had a 21-yard TD which changed the momentum and pushed the hosts ahead. Pittsburgh would never look back again. The third-round rookie from Toledo, Diontae Johnson, also needs to be mentioned, as he had a 43-yard touchdown in the third quarter.

Meanwhile, the Bengals started the game well but suddenly froze after the start of the second sequence. Their starting quarterback Andy Dalton had a bad night. He was 21 of 37 for 171 yards without a TD and being picked once, plus he had two fumbles. But not only that, Dalton suffered 8 sacks for 69 yards. The Steelers’ defense was killing him all night long. Cameron Heyward with 2.5 and T.J. Watt with 1.5 sacks were harassing Dalton. Meanwhile, the visiting team couldn’t come anywhere near Rudolph.

When looking at the stats, you might see something pretty fascinating. The Steelers held their rivals to just 175 yards in total.

Following the match, Dalton stated that he believes in his team’s chemistry and that he expects that the Bengals are going to stay together.

“Everybody is going to stick together,” Dalton said. “We have from the beginning, regardless of the circumstances of these games, we’ve stuck together. And so I don’t expect that to change.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T9gJq38Hjwk

Cincinnati will have a chance to improve the overall impression next Sunday when they meet with the Arizona Cardinals at home. It would be good for Dalton and the crew to win that one, because they head for Baltimore after that, to play against the divisional rivals, the Ravens.

On the other side, the Steelers have a huge matchup coming at home against the same opponent. The rivalry between these two sides is enormous, and besides this, the stakes are pretty high in this event. If by any chance they win, the AFC North title would be realistic once again. If not, Baltimore would gain a nice edge over them. Following that matchup, Pittsburgh heads for LA to face the Chargers.