Bengals vs. Steelers Where to Watch: Prediction, Odds, Picks, Thursday Night Football Live Stream

On the Week 7 edition of “Thursday Night Football,” the Cincinnati Bengals host the division rival Pittsburgh Steelers.

Cincinnati has lost four in a row since starting the season 2-0. The Bengals traded last week for Joe Flacco, who started last week against the Green Bay Packers but couldn’t snap Cincy out of his skid. They need to start piling up wins, fast, if they want to salvage their season and remain in contention if and when Joe Burrow can return to the lineup.

Meanwhile, Pittsburgh holds a 4-1 record and sits atop the AFC North by several games. The Steelers came off their bye and dispatched the Browns fairly easily, and they’re ready here to extend their lead in the division even further. The schedule gets a little tougher after that, so it’s important to secure victory before that happens.

Will the Steelers keep rolling or will the Bengals finally get back into the win column? We’ll find out soon enough. But before we break down the match, let’s take a look at how to watch the match.

Where to watch Bengals vs Steelers live

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When the Steelers have the ball

Did you know that the Steelers are ranked 29th in… NFL In yards per play? Look it up, it’s true.

They rank 14th in scoring because they have the third-best average starting position in the NFL and rarely turn the ball over (just 5.7% of their possessions, according to Pro-Football-Reference), but the underlying metrics of their offense aren’t all encouraging.

They are 30th in plays per drive and 28th in yards per drive. They rank 22nd in pass rate, via TruMedia, 20th in negative run rate, and 25th in share of runs that gain 10 or more yards. They are 20th in third-down conversion rate and are nowhere near fourth-ranked. They only made nine field goals.

How do they score on the ground? Some of it is just the Jets’ Week 1 game skewing things. They have scored touchdowns on just 21.4% of their possessions over their last four games after doing so on four of their 10 non-kneeling drives in the opener. They also had five scoring drives (three of which resulted in touchdowns) that started in contested territory.

And yet! They’re about to play the Bengals, who may have the worst defense in the NFL, and He may be without his best defensive player In Trey Hendrickson. Cincinnati ranks 31st in yards allowed per game and 30th in points allowed per game. The Bengals rank 30th in both EPA per game against and opponents’ success rate. Opponents scored touchdowns at the third-highest rate in the league and punted at the 10th-highest. 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 that good to move the ball on Thursday night. They just need to not shoot themselves in the foot with turnovers, and that has been the 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 a lot of ammunition when it comes to forcing players to make quick plays.

Pittsburgh can get some going with DK Metcalf in the passing game, and everyone runs it successfully against the Bengals, so Jaylen Warren and Kenneth Gainwell should be able to find some space to run as well. The Steelers may not light up the scoreboard here, but they also probably won’t have it all that bad because the Bengals aren’t forcing anyone to struggle. It looks likely to be a solid offensive performance with a few short scoring drives.

When the Bengals have the ball

On the surface, it may seem as if Joe Flacco breathed some life into Cincinnati’s offense given that the Bengals were within one score of the Packers briefly in the fourth quarter, but the truth is that wasn’t really the case.

The Bengals were scoreless until the final 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” produced 55 yards on 16 carries. Cincinnati didn’t really do anything offensively and mostly scored some points in garbage time and never threatened to actually win the game.

However, it was a marked improvement over previous weeks with Jake Browning at the helm — mostly because Flacco was able to exit the game without any turnovers. But this is 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. It’s a spinning machine. It so happened that he did not deliver it on Sunday.

Meanwhile, the Steelers have committed turnovers on 18.4% of their opponents’ possessions, according to Pro-Football-Reference. This is the third highest turnover rate in the league. Some of that is skewed by a stunning five-turnover performance by the Patriots, but they also forced five total turnovers in their other three games before the bye. They’re coming out of their first game of the season without any takeaways, but Flacco is always ready to make an interception. It wouldn’t be surprising if the Steelers trade him here.

Will Ja’Marr Chase and Tee Higgins be able to get their shot at times against Joey Porter Jr. and Darius Slay on the outside? probably. They are very good, and Flaco has a strong arm and is willing to launch the ball anywhere on the field. But Flacco is also a sitting duck in the pocket and will still operate behind one of the weakest offensive lines in the league. It will not be easy for the Bengalis to move the ball in the air.

Meanwhile, Cincinnati is just a terrible rushing offense. Chase Brown is averaging 2.7 yards per carry on the season. His runs yield just 0.45 yards before contact, on average, which ranks 34th among the 37 players with 50-plus carries this season. His yards after contact per carry (2.28) actually ranks 36th among the same group of players, so it’s not as if it’s doing much to offset the poor blocking he’s coming up with. The Steelers are averaging 4.1 yards per carry, but the idea of ​​the Bengals suddenly becoming a team that can run the ball successfully 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 down in a way that makes it seem 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 Bengals without Burrow in Week 7.) The Bengals don’t have enough juice on both sides of the ball to pull off the upset here.

Prediction: Steelers 21, Bengals 16