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Bengals Film Review: Joe Flacco Sliced Through Steelers With Ja'Marr Chase and Tee Higgins

The Bengals' offense put on a show in Week 7.
Max Toscano|
Cincinnati Bengals wide receiver Ja'Marr Chase (1) breaks a tackle attempt by Pittsburgh Steelers cornerback Joey Porter Jr. (24) in the fourth quarter of the NFL game between the Cincinnati Bengals and Pittsburgh Steelers at Paycor Stadium in Cincinnati on Oct. 16, 2025.
Cincinnati Bengals wide receiver Ja'Marr Chase (1) breaks a tackle attempt by Pittsburgh Steelers cornerback Joey Porter Jr. (24) in the fourth quarter of the NFL game between the Cincinnati Bengals and Pittsburgh Steelers at Paycor Stadium in Cincinnati on Oct. 16, 2025. | Albert Cesare/The Enquirer / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images

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Cincinnati Bengals

With a lot of help from a Pittsburgh staff that committed gameplan malpractice (more on that later), Ja'Marr Chase and Tee Higgins sliced up the tinfoil curtain like a pair of scissors in Week 7.

The duo combined for a preposterous 33 targets, with Chase receiving an eye-watering 23 of those. Overall, they racked up 257 of Joe Flacco's 342 passing yards and two of his three touchdowns. Now, the Steelers played them in a way that the Bengals haven't been played since Joe Burrow cut through Wink Martindale's NFL career to the tune of 525 yards, but it's still impressive.

If you've ever seen the 2005 Jesse Dylan/Will Ferrell classic "Kicking and Screaming," which is one of the greatest films in the rich American heritage of cinema, you understand how a team should treat its superstar players from a game-planning perspective.

New gameplan Flacco: get the ball to the Italians (Chase and Higgins).

7/11

Chase is the NFL's pre-eminent X (shortside outside receiver). Traditionally the ideal for this role is someone bigger, around 6'3, 215-220 (think Andre Johnson or Jeremiah Smith), but there's nothing about Chase's game that doesn't simulate that.

The reason teams value that size is to get off the press that boundary corners tend to play more of with the shorter distance from ball to sideline. If you notice, teams don't bother pressing Chase anymore unless they have a double over the top. That makes sense, he's the strongest receiver in the game pound for pound and if you can't slow him down at the line, you're not going to be able to recover downfield and (at least with Burrow), the quarterback is not going to miss it or bail you out with a bad throw.

It's too dangerous and they usually don't bother. The Steelers here are trying it a bit, with Darius Slay in what I suspect is a "press-bail" technique to slow the initial release with a quick jam and then roll hard deep to not get beat downfield. He never heads downfield so it's tougher to tell. Chase is powerful, but doesn't rely on that to beat defender hands anymore.

He swipes the inside hand quickly and gets into the slant cleanly. These iso slants are a classic menu item for the X to punish linebackers for either blitzing or pushing to the strongside to match numbers underneath, especially against man coverage when all they have to do is beat the cornerback inside.

Related: Film Breakdown of Bengals' New and Improved Rushing Attack

Chase has gotten to a place where he manipulates defenders at an elite level to match his physical toolset. He has to create space for this 7-yard out cut, so he takes his initial release outside to get Slay turned out to so he's prepared to carry a fade before the WR1 stems into his blind spot so he can snap off down and out as his opponent keeps drifting deep. Slay is all turned around looking for Chase to be on slant or glance behind him off of the outside stem, he literally doesn't know where he is. Chase doesn't get the ball because, with the S shaded over to to the near hash, it's basically Cover-0 for Higgins, but the route is flawless.

When teams end up with 1-on-1 coverage on Chase, which can't completely avoided (though it must only be mixed in and disguised so the QB can't just key in on it like Flacco did). You're typically hoping in that situation Burrow misses it initially looking for an answer to all the 2 and 6 you're playing, and by the time he sees the coverage and works to it, the rush is there.

That's the usual gambit when teams have to end up putting Chase in 1-on-1 coverage. It's a hard line to tow, but it worked at times because of how porous the Bengals' offensive line has always been. The Steelers didn't disguise anything and paid for it, but like most teams, they put the cornerback opposite Chase in an "off" alignment and technique.

This gives the receiver a cushion so that he can't easily get even with and pull away from the isolated cornerback downfield. A lot of vertical threats are eliminated by this because while fast, they may struggle to decelerate and come back to punish that cushion, allowing cornerbacks to recover and close (take Alec Pierce, Marquez Valdez-Scantling, and DK Metcalf with his worse 3-cone than Tom Brady for example). Chase is different. He can decelerate and sink into these comebacks and out cuts on a dime. If the Bengals know they have this, they'll just sit and throw it over and over and have for years now.

Despite being most natural at the X, the real improvement in Chase's game that has taken him from regular great to the clear best WR alive is his new ability to work the slot. Before last season, Chase's ability to get the ball and produce on the statsheet, while still great, was a bit vulnerable to certain coverage frameworks.

While he still caught plenty of balls, Chase was less useful when teams would play a ton of Cover-2 and force them to work the underneath and intermediate. Now, that was fine, they had Tyler Boyd and Hayden Hurst in 2022 doing a fine job there, but Chase was not the answer to every problem. In 2022, he averaged 87.2 yards per game and had a great year, but he averaged 100.5 and won the triple crown last season after taking major steps in this arena during the lost 2023 campaign.

The difference is that his precision in zones and beating man coverage from the slot, which is often different, has improved tenfold since then. Here he stems hard and fast with no hesitation or delay to make sure he gets into the hip pocket of the DB by the time he breaks. He needs to get even so that his break can make the DB late instead of giving him a chance to see it and recover. He puts his foot in the ground and, with zero fat, snaps off to the sideline.

We didn't get to see it a ton this game because of all the man coverage the Steelers irresponsibly played (as I pointed out after Jacksonville, it's still Chase and Higgins), but Chase has become a reliable zone beater in the underneath game. Whether he's working leverage on choice routes, settling between defenders on static concepts, or timing his routes to be in the right windows at the right times, his feel has joined forces with his short-area athleticism and YAC ability to create a monster in the slot and given the Bengals so many more ways to forcefeed him the ball.

And he even does tricks when he gets bored:

I don't think Chase actually gets enough credit. No, I don't mean he's underrated or anything like that, but because of how much success he has known at all points of his career, it is somewhat assumed that he has just always been this good. I can tell you definitively that the Chase at LSU and in his first two seasons in Cincinnati doesn't compare to the one that exists today. Current Chase in the first clip would get proper depth on this route and sell straight and snap instead of gradually rounding into it and telegraphing. In the second, he'd continue straight for another step before throwing a head-fake and pressure step to influence the defenders inside away from his out break. In the third, he'd read the cornerback and slow into this break a little bit when he sees a probable cloud to give Burrow more opportunity to split the window like he tries to. The freakshow brute the Bengals drafted out of Baton Rouge is now an artist, but still a freak.

16 to 5?

It doesn't have the same ring to it as 9-5, but Flacco is willing to dial in on Higgins if he doesn't like Chase's route pre-snap to an almost irresponsible degree. Given that the quarterback can process enough to make more honest, reliable decisions with the ball in this offense when Burrow is in his Paige Bueckers-esque streetclothes, it's not the worst idea right now. Higgins is very far from Chase in almost every way, but he is physically dominant, surprisingly fluid, even if pretty slow, and wins the football as well as anyone.

Pressing Higgins is a fool's errand as well.

Is it Sustainable?

Uncle Joe Flacco
Cincinnati Bengals quarterback Joe Flacco (16) throws a pass in the fourth quarter of the NFL Week 7 game between the Cincinnati Bengals and the Pittsburgh Steelers at Paycor Stadium in downtown Cincinnati on Thursday, Oct. 16, 2025. The Bengals won, 33-31. | Sam Greene/The Enquirer / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images

While the Italians carried Will Ferrell and Mike Ditka's Tigers to glory, teams have generally long since figured out that Chase and Higgins can destroy them without special attention. Thursday night was likely a bit of a mirage.

As I said earlier, nobody has played the Bengals like this in years with Burrow at quarterback. Had Burrow started on Thursday, disguised in Flacco's uniform, and the Steelers did what they did, he throws for 500 yards and eclipses 10 yards per attempt without breaking a sweat. The Steelers disguised very little, lived heavily in man coverage, and allowed Flacco to pick which of Higgins/Chase he wanted to target on a given play. He caught the snap, and threw before anyone can get close to him.

Because they didn't do much to take that away (though they doubled both of them on the play Iosivas hit deep up the middle, which creates a Cover-0 for everyone else), Flacco never had to think about anything but "pass it to the Italians."

We've seen Burrow have to work through reads to find answers, so obviously that's not always going to work. Once again, teams need to respect these guys. Play a ton of clouds, mix coverages unpredictably, disguise everything. You can't let the quarterback have an idea where to go pre-snap because at the end of the day, you can't cover these guys down to down no matter what you're in— especially now that Chase is a weapon in the underneath zones.

Opposing defenses can shut the Bengals down if they cloud, bracket, and mix in every type of coverage in between without Burrow on the field. But if you let him, Flacco will pepper Chase and Higgins with targets while whistling Lou Monte's "Lazy Mary" for four quarters.

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Max Toscano
MAX TOSCANO

Max Toscano breaks down football strategy. Prior to joining Bengals On SI, he interned with the coaching staff at the University of Connecticut, assisting the defensive staff in opponent scouting as well as assisting the Head Coach and GM with analytics on gameday. Max's areas of specific expertise include Quarterbacks and Tight Ends, including also hosting a publication dedicated to the tight end position. He also writes for "And The Valley Shook" on SB Nation.

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