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Saunders: Good, Bad and Ugly from Steelers Week 3 Win over Bengals
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- Saunders: Good, Bad and Ugly from Steelers Week 3 Win over Bengals
PITTSBURGH —The Pittsburgh Steelers got a huge, season-altering win on Sunday, beating the Cincinnati Bengals to move into the early lead in the AFC North, and also doing so while scoring 30 points to erase the talk about the team's moribund early season offense.
But it was't all purely positive, and the narrow home victory of the Bengals contained several issues that, it not rectified, could continue to hurt the Steelers throughout the 2026 season.
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GOOD: THE STRENGTH OF THE PACK IS THE STRENGTH
Pittsburgh Steelers tight end Darnell Washington in a game against the Cincinnati Bengals on Sept. 27, 2026. — Ed Thompson / Steelers Now
Steelers head coach Mike Tomlin used to say that the "strength of the pack was the pack," meaning that team's depth and willingness to lean on one another was the key, not the strength of the individuals involved.
When it comes to the 2026 Steelers offensive skill positions, the strength of the pack might be strength.
Darnell Washington is and always has been a beast of a human being, but the Steelers have quietly assembled a large group of hard-to-handle offensive weapons. DK Metcalf and Michael Pittman Jr. are probably the biggest, strongest and toughest 1-2 punch at wide receiver in the league. Jaylen Warren is extremely hard to bring down when he gets out of the backfield.
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Through three weeks, Steelers receivers have broken 35 tackles, the second-most of any team in the league. Only the Arizona Cardinals (39) have more. Ten teams have less than half Pittsburgh's total.
Not only are they hard to tackle, all of them are excellent downfield blockers. Pat Freiermuth cleared the way for Warren on his game-opening 30-yard reception. Metcalf, Ben Skowronek and Germie Bernard all secured downfield blocks on Washington's sideline scamper.
Bernard is fifth in wide receiver run-blocking grade (minimum 15 snaps), according to Pro Football Focus. Freiermuth is sixth among tight ends.
The Steelers established their downfield passing game first against the Bengals, and then got things moving on the ground with Warren. The third part of their offensive trifecta is going to have to be what we saw in the fourth quarter against Cincinnati: the Steelers' offensive playmakers exerting their physical will on their opponents.
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"It's about finish," Aaron Rodgers said. "There's a few guys on the team that really practice the right way, and I think we highlight those guys and then those are the guys who are showing up. Throw a little dump off to Jaylen [Warren], and Pat [Freiermuth] pancakes a guy, and you get 30 yards to get the offense going. It's all about finish. DK [Metcalf] was blocking on that play, and you come back and you hit Darnell [Washington] on two-yard pass and DK has a good block and Ben [Skowronek] has good block and Germie [Bernard] has a good block and next thing you know you get a damn near 50-yard play by guys just finishing and kind of playing the right way and you've got to practice that stuff and highlight it and set that as a standard."
GOOD: BROCK HOFFMAN BAILS OUT O-LINE
Pittsburgh Steelers right guard Brock Hoffman in a game against the Cincinnati Bengals on Sept. 27, 2026. — Ed Thompson / Steelers Now
When the Steelers signed Brock Hoffman , I assumed that he and Spencer Anderson would enter a significant competition at right guard this offseason. Hoffman had experience with Mike McCarthy , Anderson had experience with the Steelers. Neither player had been a Week 1 starter at guard for an NFL team to this point in their career, but both looked like young-ish players that could succeed given the right opportunity.
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That competition never happened. I think Hoffman took one day's worth of reps with the first-team offense. All the rest of the time, it was Anderson at right guard.
I don't really understand why or how that happened to the extent that it did, and then two weeks into the season, McCarthy made the switch to bench Anderson and play Hoffman.
Anderson certainly struggled in Week 2 against the New England Patriots , and perhaps trying to play through a broken bone in his leg is part of the problem there. But I can't quite get my head around the Steelers' offensive braintrust thinking that Anderson was so much better that they never really gave Hoffman a shot all summer to making the switch after two games.
But it's hard to argue with the results. Considering the circumstances, Hoffman was absolutely fantastic against the Bengals in Week 3. He limited the impact of All-Pro Cincinnati defensive tackle Dexter Lawrence , a player he had plenty of familiarity with the time he with the Dallas Cowboys and Lawrence was with the New York Giants .
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It went way beyond that, though. Because Hoffman never got much of any playing time with the first-team offense, that meant that he spent an awful lot of time next to second-team right tackle Max Iheanachor . When the Steelers decided to promote both of their right-side backups to starting roles for Week 3, Hoffman and Iheanachor went together, and it was clear that the rookie benefitted from veteran presence beside him.
"Tremendous amount of respect for Brock Hoffman," McCarthy said on Monday. "Obviously, we have a history. Brock — he's someone I would hire as a coach when he's done. That's what I think of him. As far as his level of preparation, his demeanor, what he brings to the table. So, if you have a young player going into the game for the first time, I don't know if you can pair them with anybody better than Brock Hoffman."
BAD: PASS PRO STILL PROBLEMATIC
Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Aaron Rodgers escapes a pressure against the Cincinnati Bengals on Sept. 27, 2026. — Ed Thompson / Steelers Now
Rodgers was sacked twice against the Bengals on Sunday. He was sacked a combined six times over the first two games, so if you want to see some progress in the pass protection after the team made the above changes on the right side of the offensive line, I suppose it's there.
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But when I watched back, I realized that Rodgers did a very good job of moving around the pocket in this game — much better than the did against New England — and that had a lot to do with him not being sacked as much.
"I thought his pocket awareness was excellent," McCarthy said. "I thought just the way he hit his back step, just when you're in a drop and you're working through your progression, the ability to set that hook, I like to refer to it — with the rushers, and you've got to really give the pass protection credit too, because there were A and B gap lanes for him step up. I think that's part of his greatness, and I thought he did a really good job of coming out of the pocket and looking downfield and running when he needed to. But I thought he played exceptionally in the scramble phase."
According to PFF's charting, the Steelers allowed 11 pressures on 40 drop-backs, meaning Rodgers was pressured 27.5% of the time. He's been pressured 25.2% of the time this season. That's up from 15.6% last year.
Rodgers had a good game running the scramble drill, but most of his worst games in 2025 came when he was highly pressured, and the Steelers are going to face much more talented groups of edge rushers than Cincinnati's, meaning for what appears to be a pass-first offense, they still have a lot of work to do in the pass protection realm.
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BAD: T.J. WATT RESURGENCE ON HOLD?
Pittsburgh Steelers outside linebacker T.J. Watt in a game against the Cincinnati Bengals on Sept. 27, 2026. — Ed Thompson / Steelers Now
In the first two weeks of the 2026 season, T.J. Watt looked once again like a candidate to be the NFL Defensive Player of the Year. He took over the season opener against the Atlanta Falcons , with two sacks and a game-sealing pick six. He had 1.5 sacks against the New England Patriots in Week 2.
That hot streak did not continue in Week 3. Watt was nearly silent against Cincinnati, accounting for one tackle and one quarterback hit. PFF didn't even record one pressure for him.
Now, the Bengals were getting rid of the ball very quickly. And Amarius Mims played very well. That certainly played a part. But if Watt is going to be a DPOY candidate, he needs to be able to overcomes those kinds of things and still make an impact on the game.
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The good news? The Steelers probably don't need Watt to be playing at a DPOY caliber to have a great defense in 2026. But Sunday's game should certainly slow some talk about him being all the way back to his peak.
UGLY: NO JPJ MAKES SECONDARY A STRUGGLE
Cincinnati Bengals wide receiver Ja'Marr Chase makes a catch over Pittsburgh Steelers cornerback Asante Samuel Jr. on Sept. 27, 2026. — Ed Thompson / Steelers Now
It's definitely not all the Steelers' fault that Joey Porter Jr. didn't play against the Bengals on Sunday. I don't even think they could have reasonably done much more than they did to prepare themselves for the possibility that he might not play than what they did by singing Asante Samuel Jr. and drafting Daylen Everette . They assembled what looked on paper to be one of the deepest cornerback rooms I have ever seen the Steelers possess.
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But without Porter, the room just doesn't rate.
It's not the fault of the individuals, but when a top wide receiver group comes to town, Patrick Graham just doesn't have the horses to roll out against them.
Now, Graham did a fantastic job of masking that weakness as much as possible on Sunday, but the effort that it took to work around the lack of man-to-man coverage ability showed that there are certainly going to be times this season, if the Steelers don't get Porter back, that his absence is really going to wreak havoc for the defense.
The Steelers' inability to come to terms with their best homegrown defensive back in a generation is almost certainly going to come back to bite them this season, and it might in the future, as well.
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