3 things we learned from Bengals’ dominant week 12 win vs Steelers

Bengals are disciplined

That’s a weird sentence to write, to be honest, because, for all the good of the Marvin Lewis era, his teams were never known for their discipline. How many times do we remember stupid false start penalties? How about illegal formations? Do personal fouls ring a bell?

According to NFLPenalties.com, Cincinnati currently has the fewest penalties and penalty yards in the league, and it’s not even close.

Many, many times in the past Pittsburgh would roll into town and ultimately, and predictably bait the Bengals into stupid, emotional penalties. Generally, a complete unraveling of the game plan, and team composure would follow. We need to look no further than playoffs 2015. That’s all I’ll say about that.

Sunday, in a game that literally held Pittsburghs fading chances in its hands, the Bengals didn’t blink. The Steelers, particularly their star defender T.J Watt, as expected pulled some questionable actions aimed at Joe Burrow, and unlike past years, while players rushed to Burrow’s aid, no punches were thrown, no penalties assessed, no composure lost.

The Bengals simply maintained their cool and went about the business of dismantling the Pittsburgh Steelers. This level of calm, cool, and composure should serve this team well into December.

Sunday was one of the finest days in recent memory to be a Bengal fan. These were the three biggest takeaways I had from the decisive defeat of the Pittsburgh Steelers. Let’s enjoy the ride and hope it keeps up.