Steelers Run Past Bengals

The Cincinnati Bengals, in the unfamiliar position Sunday of protecting a division lead, didn’t just have the pounding of Pittsburgh’s footsteps in their helmets.

They had footprints on their chests to match.

Determined not to let the AFC North slip away, the Steelers ran for a season-high 221 yards, trampling their way to a 27-13 victory on a drizzly afternoon at Paul Brown Stadium.

Willie Parker rushed for 131 yards, Jerome Bettis had 56 more, and the Steelers not only controlled the clock but turned it back, back to the days when the Bengals were the NFL’s doormat.

“It hurts,” said quarterback Carson Palmer, who had directed Cincinnati to five victories in its first six games. “This is a game we thought we should have won. It’s a game I still think we should have won. I just didn’t play well enough to win.”

But Palmer wasn’t on the field when the Steelers did most of their damage. The Bengals certainly could have used a 12th man, though, to slow Parker and Bettis, who repeatedly came up with clutch yards on grind-it-out carries.

“We couldn’t afford to lose this one,” said Bettis, whose team was staring down the barrel of a 2 1/2 -game deficit in the division. “We had to go back to basics and make sure we got the ball pounded in there, and we were successful.”

Success didn’t come easily. Twice in the first 10 minutes, the Bengals (5-2) drove deep into Pittsburgh territory yet could build no better than a 3-0 lead. The first time, an apparent touchdown pass was wiped out by instant replay and the Bengals missed a field-goal attempt. The second time, Cincinnati reached the Pittsburgh seven but failed to get into the end zone.

The Steelers (4-2) woke up on their next possession, scoring a touchdown and taking a lead they wouldn’t relinquish. Although there were hundreds and perhaps thousands of Terrible Towels swirling in the stands, there seemed to be far more Steeler fans in attendance two weeks ago when Pittsburgh played at San Diego.

The Bengals are finally starting to fill up their stadium with their fans, long-suffering supporters who slogged through season after season of losing. A lot of people saw this as a statement game for the Bengals, a chance to prove their fast start wasn’t a mirage. Entering Sunday’s game, however, each of the five teams Cincinnati had beaten had a losing record. Those teams -- Cleveland, Minnesota, Chicago, Houston and Tennessee -- were a combined 7-19.

Palmer, the former USC star, completed 21 of 36 passes for 227 yards with two interceptions. He scored the final touchdown of the game with a four-yard run in the last two minutes. Coming into the game, he had thrown 148 passes without an interception, the longest such streak in the league.

“When you play a championship team, you can’t give them anything,” he said. “It’s my responsibility to take care of the ball. It’s my responsibility to put points on the board. I flat-out didn’t play well enough to win.”

For Pittsburgh, meanwhile, the game was a chance to restore natural order to the division.

“Everybody’s talking about Cincinnati,” receiver Hines Ward said. “But don’t forget, we still won this division. We were 15-1 last season. For us, it was about getting some respect.”

A week earlier, in a loss to Jacksonville, the Steelers were without Ward and quarterback Ben Roethlisberger, both of whom were sidelined because of leg injuries. But the offense was at full strength against the Bengals, and the running game allowed Roethlisberger to sell play-action fakes and net big results out of only 14 pass attempts. He threw one touchdown pass to tight end Heath Miller and a second to Ward, the only two Pittsburgh players who caught passes.

Miller was so wide open, Roethlisberger said, “that I told him I’d never have a touchdown pass that easy again.”

Ward, who usually does a good job of staying out of trouble, got some unwanted attention from officials midway through the second quarter.

First, he was flagged for holding on a third-down reverse that would have given the Steelers a first down. On the next play, Ward atoned for the flag by making a great catch over the middle for 18 yards. He popped to his feet and spiked the ball, drawing another penalty, this one 15 yards for unsportsmanlike conduct.

He said later that he was playing with pent-up frustration after that exchange. So, when he finally reached the end zone with a four-yard touchdown catch in the third quarter, he blew off some steam with his version of the “Riverdance.” It was a lurching imitation of the one performed earlier in the season by Cincinnati’s Chad Johnson.

“It was horrible,” Ward admitted. “I’m just not a good Riverdancer.”

Some instructional footprints might have helped him. But the only footprints the Steelers left were the ones all over the Bengals.