Steelers shut down Bengals

JuJu Smith-Schuster hid his eyes, counted to 10 and went looking for Le’Veon Bell.

The Pittsburgh Steelers rookie wide receiver found his team’s star running back crouching behind the goalpost, then proceeded to chase Bell all the way to the sideline as part of a hastily planned touchdown celebration.

“That was just us being dramatic,” Bell said with a smile. In a good way for once. Smith-Schuster never did catch Bell, by the way. Now he knows how the rest of the AFC North feels about the surging Steelers.

Ben Roethlisberger threw for 224 yards and two scores, Bell added 192 total yards and Pittsburgh’s defence dominated the Cincinnati Bengals in the second half of a 29-14 victory on Sunday.

A bit of a hot mess after getting upset at home by Jacksonville two weeks ago, the Steelers (5-2) have figured things out quickly. They shut down Kansas City on the road last Sunday and followed it up by suffocating Cincinnati in the second half to move into a tie for the AFC’s best record as their once-again promising season nears the midway point.

Pittsburgh held the Bengals (2-4) to 19 yards over the final two quarters, intercepting Andy Dalton twice and sacking him four times.

“The sky’s the limit,” Steelers linebacker Bud Dupree said. “Not even the sky’s the limit. We’re not going to put a ceiling on our head. We’re going to keep going up.”

Cincinnati came in looking to add some street cred to their resurgence after their 0-3 start, but instead spent the second half reverting to the kind of ineffective offence that got Ken Zampese fired two weeks into the season.