If you’re head coach Marvin Lewis and defensive coordinator Paul Guenther, you’d take Sunday’s stat sheet in any game against the Steelers.
Hold Antonio Brown to four catches for 39 yards, a four-year low working with Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger. Hold DeAngelo Williams to less than three yards per on 32 lugs. Hold Roethlisberger to a 78.5 passer rating with two interceptions.
“I thought for the most part we played well,” said cornerback Adam Jones. “I tip my hat to Ben and those guys. They were one play better than us today.”
The 24-16 loss at Heinz Field came courtesy of a field position thumping and a struggling offense that could muster just four first downs on 16 third-down conversions and no touchdowns on three red-zone trips. Certainly don’t look at the starting cornerbacks, Jones and Dre Kirkpatrick, who each had an interception and a hand in shutting down Brown.
“How many plays did we have?” Jones asked. “That’s another question. 74? Wooow. That’s a lot of plays. .All we have to do is have the guys in this locker room stick together. At the end of the day this is going to be a special l group. I promise you that. We’ll take this on the chin and keep working. We’ll get better from it.”
The game plan on Brown, the 1,800-yard machine? Kirkpatrick said it was challenging Brown in press coverage.
“I’ve got to say something about our safeties,” Kirkpatrick said. “They put us in great position.”
A Sunday morning phone call from Tish Jones, Adam’s wife, also may have helped.
“This morning my wife called with Scripture and told me to do what I can do and let the good Lord handle the rest of it,” Jones said. “Clearly I’m content. Write what you want to write.”
It will be recalled that Jones was at the center of the wild final 1:23 of the Wild Card game against the Steelers. His personal foul, hotly debated from the Bengals’ side, gave the Steelers a chip-shot field goal to win it. On Sunday, Jones was nowhere near a personal foul in a game with just two personal fouls and ran off the field at the end of the game with no mingling with the Steelers.
“My tolerance for B.S. is this big,” said Jones, holding up a very small gap between his thumb and index finger. “If I remove myself from the situation, I don’t have to worry about it.”
The problem is they couldn’t remove Roethlisberger from the situation. As he always does he made his coaches look good by bailing them out of loads of trouble. He completed just 19 of 37 passes and tried to force feed it to Brown on 11 targets. But when he had to, he threw lovely balls to guys you may have not heard of, such as tight ends Jesse James and Xavier Grimble and wide receiver Sammie Coates.
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