Cincinnati Bengals
It's Steeler week
By C. Trent Rosecrans, CNATI.com Posted September 21, 2009 5:58 PM ET
There will be no talk of blackouts, no resting on laurels and certainly no overlooking this week's opponent -- it's Steeler week for the Bengals.On Sunday, the defending Super Bowl champions come to Paul Brown Stadium for the first of two meetings with the Bengals.
"From a player's standpoint there's a little extra (energy) there but for the most part you have to stay focused and work as you do for every game," said Bengals running back Cedric Benson. "From a coaches standpoint, they might have a little pressure on them or something but they get riled up."
From a fan's standpoint, it's the biggest game of the year. The Steelers are not only the envy of Bengals fans from an organizational standpoint, they're in the same division, they're close geographically and their fanbase is so large that everyone knows a Steelers fan. And everyone who knows a Steelers fan knows they know a Steelers fan. This is the only Bengals home game that is already sold out. Many of those fans at Paul Brown Stadium will be waving a Terrible Towel and wearing black and gold.
"As I said last week after the Denver game, the fans were outstanding, the crowd was great and we anticipate having another fun afternoon and a great crowd and getting them a win," Bengals head coach Marvin Lewis. "They did a great job, I thought, against Denver. It made a real advantage for us. We hope to have the same advantage this week, so it will be fun. You saw the effects that a crowd has on a team on the road yesterday again for us, as we had the false-start there on the goal line and so forth. So those things are imporatnt. You just have to spend a lot of time preparing for that and being in the right spots and so forth, and you only get eight chances in the regular season to have that to your advantage."
Also to the Bengals advantage is the week's preparation they got from playing the Packers, who have a defense similar to the Steelers' 3-4.
"There are some things that are very similar to what Pittsburgh does that Dom has incorporated into what they're doing, particularly in the third-down stuff and so forth, some of the first- and second-down stuff. So yeah, it's similar," Lewis said. Obviously, (Steelers defensive coordinator) Dick (LeBeau) wrote the book on this now. Dick's done a great job, and these guys have been doing it since '93, the first time we started doing some of this stuff, some of it in '92. So you have the same people in place for a long period of time, and so that makes a little bit difference of the rate of play and so forth and the speed and the tempo."
Categories: Cincinnati Bengals, Featured Stories, News
Tags: Cedric Benson, Dick LeBeau, Marvin Lewis
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