National Columnist Praises Bengals: They Are 'For Real'

Cincinnati swept Pittsburgh for the first time since 1990.

Author:
James Rapien
Publish date:
Nov 29, 2021 12:52 PM EST

CINCINNATI — The Bengals beat the Steelers 41-10 on Sunday at Paul Brown Stadium.

It was their third-straight win over Pittsburgh and the first time they swept the Steelers since 2009.

Joe Burrow wasn't alive the last time the Bengals won three-straight games against the Steelers (1990).

Cincinnati is 7-4 this season and currently the No. 5 seed in the AFC. Sports Illustrated's Albert Breer praised the Bengals after Sunday's big win.

"The Bengals are for real," Breer wrote as one of his 10 takeaways for his Monday Morning Quarterback column. "If you wanted to think this was the same old Cincinnati outfit a couple of weeks ago, it’d have been hard to blame you. After an eye-opening 5–2 start, the Bengals blew a lead at the Jets on Halloween and got blown out by the Browns the week after that to limp into their bye at 5–4. And with that, the players and coaches got a shot to take stock of where they were—and there’s no question that reflection certainly could’ve allowed the doubts of the past to creep back in. But in this case, the opposite happened."

The Bengals outscored the Steelers 65-20 in two games against them this season. They're 3-1 in the division and head coach Zac Taylor already has more wins this season (seven) than he had in his first two years combined (six).

"This is the 2021 Bengals,” Taylor told Breer. “And we’ve got a team, a bunch of guys we brought in that are new to the team this year, last year, and we’re just focused on this. And we feel like we had a ton of momentum in the early part of the season. We were playing great football. We stumbled a little bit like every team does, especially this year in this league, and had those two losses. But now we’re back to playing like we felt we were against Detroit and against Baltimore. And these guys just have a ton of confidence right now, but it’s earned confidence. They put in the work. We got the right leadership, and these performances are what happen when you have all that combination of things.”

The Bengals will try to win their third-straight game on Sunday against the Chargers. They faced some adversity a few weeks ago, but responded the right way and enter the month of December in position to make a playoff run for the first time since 2015.

Read Breer's entire column here. For more on the Bengals' win over the Steelers, watch the video below.

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