Steeler vs. Bengals Review

Hey, we won. We won big. We're now 5-1 and, with the schedule we have coming up, we need every win we can get.

I'm glad that this game was a victory for the black and gold. I'm glad that I pretty much predicted how it would go down -- that the Bengals would hang around for a while, then slowly start to fade away until they eventually succumbed to the will of the Might Steelers.

The trouble is that there's really nothing you can take away from this game to hang your hat on. We ran the ball well, but that was pretty much because the Bengals run defense is horrible. Ben had a good day throwing the ball, but that was more as a result of Cincinnati's suckitude than our awesomeness.

We didn't allow a sack, but I think that was more a by-product of the fact that the Bengals can't rush the quarterback and they have, like, five sacks total this year. We had seven sacks on defense, but the Cincinnati offensive line licks the sweat off a dead man's balls.

So, really, what did we learn? We learned that the Bengals are bad, the Steelers are good, and that we won on Sunday to push the season record to 5-1. Seriously, that's good enough for me. We need to take the wins where we can get them.

Three of the next four games on the schedule are at home, but we play the Giants (in Pittsburgh), then the Redskins (at DC), then the Colts and Chargers at home. Even if the two AFC teams on that list are out of synch and possibly heading for hugely disappointing seasons, anything can happen in the three weeks between now and when we play them.

Both teams have a ton of talent and might suddenly say, "Hey, wait a second! We're really good at this football thing! How about we start acting like it?" And then they could go on a run where they thrash the shit out of whoever they play for six or seven weeks straight.

Of course, they could continue to spiral, lose their way, and be running on fumes and depression by Week 10. You never know. Which is why it would be good if we kept winning games. The more games we win and the more games they lose, the more it's going to seem to them -- and us, and the rest of the league -- that we're separating from them and they have no prayer of beating us.

They'll still try (and they may come close, because they are talented teams, after all) , but they'll fail because their lack of faith in themselves will not allow them to succeed.

It's a weird dynamic, but it's going to be more important to follow what the Chargers and Colts do to hurt or help themselves in the next few weeks than it will be to track the progress of the Steelers.

And, who knows, both teams will still have enough time left to save their respective seasons (unless they totally implode) by the time they play us, so they might have their backs against the wall the game where they play us.

Fear and desperation are excellent motivating factors and tend to make football players better. So is confidence. Right now, the Steelers are playing with a lot of confidence. Hopefully, that continues. Hopefully, the confidence will be beaten out of our future opponents by the time we face them -- Dallas, I'm looking at you -- and we might actually come out of this season with one of the easier schedules of all time when it's all said and done.

Then again, we still have to play the defending champs, the hated Ravens, and the Tennessee Titans before the end of the season, so it's probably too early to have that discussion.