Pittsburgh Steelers vs Cincinnati Bengals: Monday Night Football

Steelers

Not a great selection for a prime-time game. But I guess the schedule makers could not know that these two teams will combine for a 0-6 record, going into Week 4. One of the main reasons for that, at least on Pittsburgh's side was the injury of Ben Roethlisberger. Big Ben injured his elbow in a loss to the Seahawks, when he had to leave the game and got replaced by the 2nd year Oklahoma St product, Mason Rudolph.

He wasn't doing bad in that relief role and judging by the score from his debut start vs San Francisco, some might think he did well in that game too. But, if you watched the game you could see that the Niners dominated pretty much the entire way. Steelers were kept in it by winning the turnover battle. San Francisco was very sloppy with the ball, fumbling it on couple occasions in their own territory, giving Pittsburgh's offense short field to work with.

Rudolph ended the game with 174 yards, 2 touchdowns and an interception. It's worth mentioning that 40% of those yards came from JuJu's catch and run. He completed barely 50% of his passes and had just above 6 yards per play. And as I already mentioned, they were helped by 5 turnovers by the opponent. Still couldn't get the win.

Bengals

Cincy had a similarly bad experience with the 49ers in Week 2, when they got steamrolled at home. Other than that game, they actually had two decent performances on the road. First almost escaping with a huge upset in Seattle, and last week hanging with a solid Bills team in Buffalo. Although they're 0-3, I still think there are some positives about Bengals and their performance this year.

Or maybe my expectations were just super-low. I thought that the new coaching staff will look to re-build. Maybe even try to replace Andy Dalton. But most definitely acquire some draft capital, so they can add talent to this roster in forthcoming drafts. Some of their positions group are painfully untalented. The offensive line probably the most obvious one out of them all.

But actually, weaknesses of this roster revealed the brilliance of new head coach Zac Taylor and his coaching staff. They wisely adjusted their schemes to fit their personnel as best as possible. To help out this O-line, they are relying heavily on short passes. They are not leaving their tackles in 1-on-1 situations with pass rushers, asking them to pass protect for 5 seconds. It's about quick sets, the ball coming out of Dalton's hand fast and they work from there.

Steelers vs Bengals best bet

We could go in a bunch of different directions here. Betting against Mason Rudolph seems like a good idea at this point, but since all the good numbers on Bengals are long gone, I'm going to pass. Tyler Boyd has produced consistently in this offense and Steelers have Mike Hilton at nickel, whom they mostly use as a blitzer anyway. But in this case, I believe they'll keep newly acquired Minkah Fitzpatrick in the area, who was graded out very well as a slot corner last year.

Last week, I mentioned that James Washington was a very popular over pick, based on the theory that he and Mason Rudolph were teammates at college, so they should be on the same page when it comes to the passing game. Personally, I was not very fond of that play because I think Washington is more of a vertical threat, which are not that successful against Seattle-like cover 3 defenses, where corners are playing off the ball and don't let the receiver get behind their back. I was right because he caught 2 balls for only 14 yards.

But, this Bengals offense is way more prone to allowing big plays in the passing game. And now with this line slightly lower after poor outing last week, I believe there is some value with the over. Also, Donte Moncrief got benched after those awful drops in weeks 1&2, so Washington played nearly 100% of snaps last week.