Vegas Butcher
Steelers / Bengals Under 44.5
The last two weeks of the season, Pittsburgh offense registered DVOA of -2% and -21%. Those games came against Baltimore, ranked 25th in pass-D, and Cleveland, ranked 27th in pass-D. Against a Bengals D that ranks 10th in defending the pass, I don’t see things getting any easier. It’s also important to note that Steelers struggled against two divisional opponents, teams that were seeing them for the 2nd time in weeks 16 and 17. Well, Cincy is also a divisional opponent, and they’ll be meeting each other for the 3rd time now. By this time, each team should be very well acquainted with one another. Roethlisberger has now thrown 2 INT’s in 3 consecutive games and he’ll go up against a fully healthy Bengals defense, a team that registered 3 INT’s against him in the first meeting of the season. (The second game between the two teams featured an early injury to Andy Dalton, and an unprepared McCarron, as the game-flow got out of hand in that one a bit with a lot of big plays. I’m going to ignore that 2nd meeting for the purposes of this analysis). Something is ‘off’ with Roethlisberger, as he’s not playing well right now and going up against a tough Cincy D on the road is going to be difficult. Speaking of being on the ‘road’, Roethlisberger has an 18:8 TD:INT rate at home while only a 5:9 TD:INT rate on the road this year. He made 6 starts in each scenario. To make things more difficult, DeAngelo Williams is OUT for this game, leaving the Steelers with scraps at their RB position. This is a crucial loss as Williams, like Bell in years past, has been one of the best RB’s in the league and a guy that virtually never came off the field. If Cincy’s dominant CB’s and safeties can contain the Steelers’ pass-game, I think this could be a really tough game for Pittsburgh’s offense. Pass protection could be an issue as well, especially if Bengals decide to blitz a little more than usual. Williams was excellent at blitz-pickups – his backups, probably not so much.
On the other side, we of course have a Cincy offense without their starting QB in Dalton. Since he went down, the Bengals went from the being the #1 offense in the league to ranking 17th, with a +0.2% DVOA in the last 4 weeks. That’s of course is as average as you can get. Everyone knows this of course. What people might NOT be aware of is that Pittsburgh’s defense ranks 8th according to weighted DVOA (weighted just means adjusted more for games later in the season than the early ones). They are 15th against the pass and 5th against the run. Hard to see Cincy being very effective on the ground in this matchup, so McCarron will be tasked with moving the chains. Naturally, he won’t be as effective as Dalton.
Evaluating that first game between the two teams, Pittsburgh averaged 5.3 YPP (Yards Per Play), while Bengals were at 4.6 YPP mark. Both were below each team’s average for the season. In addition, both squads combined for 5 INT’s in that one and only 7 for 26 (27%) on 3rd downs. The O/U is 3-5 in Cincy’s home games and 2-6 in Pittsburgh’s road games this year. I expect both defenses to play well here as we should see a low-scoring, close game tonight.