Scott Long
11/23/20
On Sunday, November 15, 2020 the Cincinnati Bengals traveled to Pittsburgh to play the Steelers at Heinz Field in a week 10 divisional battle. The Bengals entered the game with a 2-5-1 record and were looking to hand the 8-0 Steelers their first loss of the season. As for the Broadcast, the game was nationally televised on Fox, with Kenny Albert on as the play-by-play commentator, and Jonathan Vilma as the color commentator. While AFC games are typically under the jurisdiction of CBS, this week was unique because this AFC matchup between two divisional rivals was handed over to Fox, which typically only handles NFC games, and cross-conference games.
On the broadcast the players most often promoted and spoke of as great were as expected: Ben Roethlisberger, Joe Burrow, T.J. Watt, Minkah Fitzpatrick, Tyler Boyd and Jessie Bates III. Burrow and Roethlisberger came as no surprise as the quarterbacks are always a storyline, but particularly in this game as Joe Burrow was this year’s first overall pick, and he was playing his first career game against the divisional rival Steelers, who are led by Roethlisberger, who happens to be a future Hall of Famer, and the player that has dominated the division for the last 17 years. Fox even brought up a graphic to prove how good Burrow has been in his rookie year, showing that he is averaging the most passing yards per game of any number one overall pick ever in his rookie year. However, while that is impressive, and he has played well this statistic is skewed, as the others mentioned mostly also played in the modern era which favors passing more. Also, while he has played extremely well and looks like he has a bright future, the announcers didn’t mention that the main reason that he has so many passing yards is because the Bengals have been trailing in most of their games, and as a result he has been forced to drop back and pass much more than a quarterback would typically have to, with his fewest pass attempts being around 30, and his most capping way up around 60 attempts in a single game. While they are right to say how impressive he has been, it would’ve made sense for them to comment and say that he has been forced to play like this as a result of their defense playing so poorly and how quickly they have fallen behind. By the fourth quarter this was finally addressed a little bit, when Vilma was discussing that the Bengals will not be able to compete for the division title any time soon, unless they begin to change their identity a little, and this is what he should be discussing. He mentioned how they are too reliant on slinging the ball through the air, and how the AFC North has typically been one by teams who have a good defense and at least somewhat of a running game, so they need to develop a more well rounded team, before being able to compete with the Steelers and Baltimore Ravens who have been the class of the division for the last 15 years. The other quarterback in the matchup is Ben Roethlisberger, and one graphic they showed in the broadcast was that he won Offensive Rookie of the Year the same year that Vilma won Defensive Rookie of the Year, which was an interesting tidbit for Vilma and Albert to discuss considering, Vilma has been retired for several years, and Roethlisberger is still running one of the league’s highest scoring offenses.
Another stat that they were discussing extensively throughout the game was inefficiency on third down. Both teams struggled to move the chains in third down situations, in fact the Steelers were only 6-16 on third down conversions in the game, and they were the far more efficient team, despite the inefficient clip they converted at. The Bengals struggled even more to keep the chains moving, as the Bengals failed to convert a single third down the entire game, and the announcers kept mentioning it. This was a great statistic for the announcers to talk about, because while this isn’t a statistic people talk about when talking about a full season, aside from score and turnover differential, third down conversions is probably one of the most important stats when talking about an individual game. The reason for this, is that the team who converts more on third down has longer drives and keeps control of the clock, and this is something that Vilma and Albert continually discussed. Despite the fact that as Vilma said, the Steelers couldn’t seem to find a running game, they controlled time of possessions because they used the short passing game as their running game, and were able to come up with a few third down conversions. This was so important because, the Bengals lost this game because they turned the ball over more than the Steelers and because they didn’t possess the ball as much as the Steelers, and that is because they continually failed to convert on third down, which meant that they weren’t able to extend and maintain lengthy drives.
While this may be an advanced statistic, one thing that Albert and Vilma continually spoke off was separation. While this may be measurable, they were looking at it from the eye test, and were analyzing how the Steelers were abusing the separation the Bengals cornerbacks gave in coverage. The Bengals rarely gave regular 5 yards of separation in this game, rather they opted to either go press coverage and jam the receiver at the line of scrimmage, or in the case of Chase Claypool, decided to give a lot of separation so they couldn’t be beat deep. The problem is the Steelers abused this, as every time one of the receivers was in press coverage they trusted Claypool, Juju Smith-Schuster or Diontae Johnson to beat the corner deep because of their speed, and when they were in off coverage, particularly on Johnson, Roethlisberger was comfortable picking up 5 yards, and trusted Johnson’s elusiveness believing that he would make the first man miss, which he did most of the time. Going off of this and looking more in depth at it, Vilma after the first quarter acknowledged that the Steelers had completed many of their passes in the first quarter to whichever receiver was being covered by Tony Brown. Brown isn’t a starter for the Bengals, however when starting cornerback Mackenzie Alexander left with an injury early in the game, Brown was thrust into the starting spot. The Steelers went after him and tested him right away and with success, thus leading him to be the main target for most of the game. This benefitted the Steelers so well because they don’t have a definitive number 1 receiver, as all three of the aforementioned wide receivers has an argument for being the team’s top guy, so Roethlisberger can just choose to throw whoever has the best cornerback matchup.
Clearly, Fox and their commentators Jonathan Vilma, and Kenny Albert provided some in depth insight into the Steelers and Bengals week 10 divisional clash. They analyzed some statistics, talked about what players were the superstars on the field and provided some of their own insight, from what they were seeing on the field with the eye test from the press box and their experience as announcers, and Vilma’s additional experience as a former player. The Steelers were able to come out on top 36-10 in this divisional clash, but aside from the game, it was interesting to analyze the breakdown and analysis of the game from the Fox team, especially considering the AFC games are typically covered by CBS.