September 24, 2026 • 10 mins
Mo & Rob preview Bengals/Steelers week 3 matchup
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
The Bengals storm into the Steel City looking to pitch
Pittsburgh into the recycling bin. Just saying the word Pittsburgh
makes me want to puke. The Bengals slug it out
with the Steelers. Sunday, coverage begins at 9 a.m. Stream
for free on the new and improved iHeartRadio app or
(00:23):
on ESPN 1530, the official home of the Cincinnati Bengals.
It's the Bengals and Steelers.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
Been sorted by the uh seat of our pants today
late for the hour my apologies because i do not
know how to read a clock i've been doing this
for a long time and i still can't adhere to
the format what's up i'm mo egger this is espn
1530 thank you so much for joining us jay morrison's
going to be on this show in 15 minutes john
cunningham the ucad is going to be with us in
(00:52):
just about 30 minutes talk about nip at night and
Maybe his thoughts on last night's tip-off dinner featuring Jared
Calhoun and Celtics head coach Joe Mazzulli. Even this Knicks
fan enjoyed listening to Joe Mazzulli last night. I also
enjoy listening to Robert Weintraub, who joins us every single week.
He writes a weekly Bengals column for Cincinnati Magazine, and
(01:14):
he is with us right now.
Speaker 3 (01:16):
Hi, Robert. Hey, sounds like I should also be head
coaching an NBA team. That capacity of putting me in
there with Joe Mizzou, I appreciate it.
Speaker 4 (01:25):
Yeah, sure.
Speaker 2 (01:25):
You, Joe Mizzou, we can put you in charge of
the Brooklyn Nets if you want.
Speaker 4 (01:29):
That's fine.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
You want to go do that?
Speaker 4 (01:30):
Can't be worse.
Speaker 3 (01:32):
No, you cannot.
Speaker 2 (01:32):
No, you cannot. The Bengals, it feels like they can't
do any better. 41 pressures. Put that in context for me.
I know that's good, but it's like we talk about
in baseball, like OPS. What's a good OPS? Some people
don't know. What's a good number of pressures in a
normal NFL game?
Speaker 3 (01:50):
Well, here's the thing. It all depends on sort of
what you constitute as a pressure, who's doing the counting.
You see all kinds of different numbers. For example, at
FTN Fantasy, the company I.
Speaker 4 (02:00):
Work for, we had C.J.
Speaker 3 (02:02):
Stroud over the last two weeks only getting pressured 25
times in two games. So obviously they didn't get 41
pressures according to our numbers. That's the question is what
constitutes a pressure? Obviously, 41 is a high number if
that's real. I usually go with the– my gold standard
is pro football reference. They're sort of the unofficial official
numbers cruncher of the NFL. They split it into four
(02:25):
different categories, right? Sacks, hits, pressures, and hurries. Now, what's
the difference between a pressure and a hurry?
Speaker 4 (02:31):
I don't know.
Speaker 3 (02:32):
It's in the eye of the beholder, I guess. But
by their numbers, Cincinnati had 28.
Speaker 4 (02:37):
Of those on Sunday, right?
Speaker 3 (02:39):
They had four sacks, three hits, 14 pressures, seven hurries.
Now where does that rank? Well, let's go back to
the super bowl. I think we can all agree that
Seattle destroyed New England's offensive line that game and.
Speaker 4 (02:50):
Their past rush was the story.
Speaker 3 (02:52):
And they had 36 combined sacks, hits, pressures, and hurries
36 to 28, pretty much in the same ballpark, right?
And here's the thing. It's like when I came away
from the Texans-Bengals game on Sunday, it was not even
that the pass rush was the story, but it was
the run defense, right?
Speaker 4 (03:08):
I mean, it was, what, 14 running back runs for
18 yards? One of those ever-running things like that.
Speaker 3 (03:15):
Great as the pass rush was, it was Dexter Lawrence
taking Houston's game plan and putting in the paper shredder.
That was really the story, I thought. So no matter
what the number of pressures or hurries or anything up
front in the pass rush, if you can combine that
with an excellent run defense, they're going to win a
lot of games regardless of what the number is.
Speaker 2 (03:35):
Let's stay with the pass rush because a big part
of it, cash is how. Should I make a wager
on cash is how plus 3,300 be the defensive rookie
of the year?
Speaker 3 (03:45):
I'll tell you what, mom, still scarred from our conversation
right about this time of the year, two years ago,
you asked me the same question about Eric all and
then what happened?
Speaker 4 (03:55):
He goes down for two years.
Speaker 2 (03:57):
Yeah. Comeback player of the year this year. I don't
care what they say about Patrick Mahomes.
Speaker 4 (04:02):
Here's the thing. You just want to make a wager
one way or the other.
Speaker 3 (04:06):
Keep the money in the pocket for now. The real
overall point is that we're even talking about it, right?
Speaker 4 (04:11):
Yes.
Speaker 3 (04:11):
In comparison to say Ruben Bain, who's obviously connected. to
Howell both through the Bengals connection and also the short
arms T-Rex factor.
Speaker 4 (04:20):
And Bain has done nothing for two games. We saw
him up.
Speaker 3 (04:23):
Close get dominated by Marcus Mims. So, you know, the
fact that Howell's having success straight away, not just as
a pass rusher, which we all thought he could do,
but he's played.
Speaker 4 (04:31):
Well against the run.
Speaker 3 (04:32):
He's even dropped back into coverage a couple of times.
He's just looked like an all-around guy who looks like
he belongs at this level.
Speaker 4 (04:39):
That's what's important.
Speaker 3 (04:40):
He has a couple of things, obviously, working against him
in winning that award.
Speaker 4 (04:44):
One being, will he.
Speaker 3 (04:45):
Get enough coming numbers to get up there with this
deep defensive front that we just talked about with Cincinnati,
and will he actually be the guy to even lead
the team in sacks? We don't know about that just yet. Secondly,
he plays in Cincinnati, right? I mean, the guys who
play in New York and Kansas City and Dallas, the
Caleb Downs and the David Bailey's of the world will
(05:06):
probably get more eyeballs on him. So he'll have to
do something really special, actually break through and win the award.
But like I say, the fact that we're even just
discussing it is a great sign, and hopefully he just
stays upright the entire season. That's more important to me
than the hardware.
Speaker 2 (05:19):
I cannot think of a least sympathetic figure in the
entire country than Aaron Rodgers and his punchable face. But
he is very immobile. He looks like a shell of himself.
He's almost my age. The Bengals have been really good
up front. Is there at least a little shred of
sorrow that somebody like me could work up for him
based on how things may unfold on Sunday?
Speaker 4 (05:41):
I mean, he's the Steelers quarterback.
Speaker 3 (05:44):
Any Steelers quarterback, if they were drowning, would you throw
him away for a second?
Speaker 4 (05:48):
I don't think so. Probably not.
Speaker 3 (05:52):
I get your point, but listen, I think back to
last year, he was in a similar situation, and on
Thursday night, he threw four touchdown passes against us, was
almost a hero, thank God for Joe Faleco, right? And
then in the second game, the Bengals actually knocked him out.
I barely remember that game, but they took him out
with a broken wrist, and what happens? Mason Rudolph comes in,
looks like prime MVP Aaron Rodgers, so I don't know,
(06:13):
maybe the best thing is to keep him in the
game but playing to his standard over the past couple
weeks which is as you said very poor near the
bottom of the league and really what I'm looking for
is that you know the Bengals front lines is truly
elite and like they've shown over the past two weeks
what they have they'll do what New England did to
Pittsburgh's offensive line which was you know completely uh dominated
(06:35):
and uh you know that's what the Bengals aspire to
to be as good as New England's defensive front I
think they can do that Pittsburgh's offensive line so far
this year has been Pretty patchwork. They moved their right
tackle and guard to the left side. That hasn't worked
out great. They spent a couple of premium picks, draft picks,
on guys who haven't really seen the field yet either.
It's a good time to take down that offensive line, probably,
(06:58):
and with Rodgers, as you say, an ancient, immobile.
Speaker 4 (07:01):
Guy playing behind it.
Speaker 3 (07:03):
A questionable offensive line. It's all set up for Cincinnati
to dominate the game up front once again, which I
hope they do so.
Speaker 2 (07:10):
Robert Weintraub's weekly Bengals column at Cincinnati.com or Cincinnati.com, CincinnatiMagazine.com.
You can read it now, my faux pas. Do the
Bengals have an Orlando Brown problem? And if so, how
in the short term do they fix it?
Speaker 3 (07:27):
Well, it seems like we just had this discussion last
week and it's only gotten worse, right? Well, I mean,
what did I say then? I said they're paying him
like a slightly below average left tackle in the league
and they're getting what they pay for. I think they
thought he wouldn't be quite this below average, you know,
in his defense. Obviously, Houston's defensive line poses, you know,
(07:48):
a significant problem for any left tackle. I think he
tends to get better as the season goes along, as
a lot of veterans do.
Speaker 4 (07:56):
Certainly in Cincinnati, they do.
Speaker 3 (07:57):
And I don't think he'll play as badly as he
did on Sunday going forward, most likely.
Speaker 4 (08:03):
And even Joe.
Speaker 3 (08:03):
Burrow said he didn't think Orlando played a bad game,
and he knows more than we do about it. So clearly,
maybe it won't be as bad going forward. But I
do think, I mean, listen, he's getting up there in years.
We've had this discussion, and what can they do about it?
We talked all summer about the fact that You know,
they were in deep trouble if they had to go
to one of the reserves off the bench in case
(08:25):
of injury. We didn't even bring up the idea of
replacing a tackle for cause, and yet here we are
a few weeks thinking Orlando may have to take a
seat on the bench. I don't think they're going to
go that route, not necessarily.
Speaker 4 (08:37):
Not yet, certainly. And, you know, what can they do
about it?
Speaker 3 (08:40):
I mean, unfortunately, that's one thing Zach Taylor and his
staff had a lot of experience at is scheming around
offensive line problems, right? And there's a lot of things
you can do from putting extra tight ends on that
side of the ball and chipping and running plays to
the other side of the field and getting the ball
out quickly. They know what they can do to mitigate
the problem. But, you know, going forward, your left tackle
(09:03):
is a weak link on your offense. That's obviously never
a good thing. So hopefully we'll see Orlando take a
step up in his playing.
Speaker 4 (09:12):
I think he's capable of it. We just we need
to see it.
Speaker 2 (09:16):
Do you think anybody in the league has a more
punchable face than Aaron Rodgers?
Speaker 3 (09:21):
I wish I could think of a German term for
a face that you want to punch. It's like, it's
one of those super long German ones.
Speaker 4 (09:30):
All right. But no, to answer the question shortly, absolutely not.
Speaker 3 (09:34):
I think the Bengals could probably get a booth line
up there, make some money by, you know, pay $ 5
and punch Aaron Rodgers in the face.
Speaker 4 (09:43):
They'd make a mint off that. Yeah. Well done. All right.
Speaker 2 (09:51):
We'll talk next week, man. Thanks so much.
Speaker 3 (09:53):
Can't wait, Mo.
Speaker 4 (09:54):
Thank you.
Speaker 2 (09:54):
It's our guy, Robert Weintraub, writes a weekly Bengals column.
I'll get the publication right now, CincinnatiMagazine.com. Jay Morrison writes
for Bengals Talk, and he's going to BengalsTalk.com, and he's
going to join us next.
Speaker 3 (10:06):
Cincinnati's ESPN 1530.
Speaker 2 (10:10):
Traffic. From the UC Health Traffic Center.
The Bengals storm into the Steel City looking to pitch
Pittsburgh into the recycling bin. Just saying the word Pittsburgh
makes me want to puke. The Bengals slug it out
with the Steelers. Sunday, coverage begins at 9 a.m. Stream
for free on the new and improved iHeartRadio app or
(00:23):
on ESPN 1530, the official home of the Cincinnati Bengals.
It's the Bengals and Steelers.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
Been sorted by the uh seat of our pants today
late for the hour my apologies because i do not
know how to read a clock i've been doing this
for a long time and i still can't adhere to
the format what's up i'm mo egger this is espn
1530 thank you so much for joining us jay morrison's
going to be on this show in 15 minutes john
cunningham the ucad is going to be with us in
(00:52):
just about 30 minutes talk about nip at night and
Maybe his thoughts on last night's tip-off dinner featuring Jared
Calhoun and Celtics head coach Joe Mazzulli. Even this Knicks
fan enjoyed listening to Joe Mazzulli last night. I also
enjoy listening to Robert Weintraub, who joins us every single week.
He writes a weekly Bengals column for Cincinnati Magazine, and
(01:14):
he is with us right now.
Speaker 3 (01:16):
Hi, Robert. Hey, sounds like I should also be head
coaching an NBA team. That capacity of putting me in
there with Joe Mizzou, I appreciate it.
Speaker 4 (01:25):
Yeah, sure.
Speaker 2 (01:25):
You, Joe Mizzou, we can put you in charge of
the Brooklyn Nets if you want.
Speaker 4 (01:29):
That's fine.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
You want to go do that?
Speaker 4 (01:30):
Can't be worse.
Speaker 3 (01:32):
No, you cannot.
Speaker 2 (01:32):
No, you cannot. The Bengals, it feels like they can't
do any better. 41 pressures. Put that in context for me.
I know that's good, but it's like we talk about
in baseball, like OPS. What's a good OPS? Some people
don't know. What's a good number of pressures in a
normal NFL game?
Speaker 3 (01:50):
Well, here's the thing. It all depends on sort of
what you constitute as a pressure, who's doing the counting.
You see all kinds of different numbers. For example, at
FTN Fantasy, the company I.
Speaker 4 (02:00):
Work for, we had C.J.
Speaker 3 (02:02):
Stroud over the last two weeks only getting pressured 25
times in two games. So obviously they didn't get 41
pressures according to our numbers. That's the question is what
constitutes a pressure? Obviously, 41 is a high number if
that's real. I usually go with the– my gold standard
is pro football reference. They're sort of the unofficial official
numbers cruncher of the NFL. They split it into four
(02:25):
different categories, right? Sacks, hits, pressures, and hurries. Now, what's
the difference between a pressure and a hurry?
Speaker 4 (02:31):
I don't know.
Speaker 3 (02:32):
It's in the eye of the beholder, I guess. But
by their numbers, Cincinnati had 28.
Speaker 4 (02:37):
Of those on Sunday, right?
Speaker 3 (02:39):
They had four sacks, three hits, 14 pressures, seven hurries.
Now where does that rank? Well, let's go back to
the super bowl. I think we can all agree that
Seattle destroyed New England's offensive line that game and.
Speaker 4 (02:50):
Their past rush was the story.
Speaker 3 (02:52):
And they had 36 combined sacks, hits, pressures, and hurries
36 to 28, pretty much in the same ballpark, right?
And here's the thing. It's like when I came away
from the Texans-Bengals game on Sunday, it was not even
that the pass rush was the story, but it was
the run defense, right?
Speaker 4 (03:08):
I mean, it was, what, 14 running back runs for
18 yards? One of those ever-running things like that.
Speaker 3 (03:15):
Great as the pass rush was, it was Dexter Lawrence
taking Houston's game plan and putting in the paper shredder.
That was really the story, I thought. So no matter
what the number of pressures or hurries or anything up
front in the pass rush, if you can combine that
with an excellent run defense, they're going to win a
lot of games regardless of what the number is.
Speaker 2 (03:35):
Let's stay with the pass rush because a big part
of it, cash is how. Should I make a wager
on cash is how plus 3,300 be the defensive rookie
of the year?
Speaker 3 (03:45):
I'll tell you what, mom, still scarred from our conversation
right about this time of the year, two years ago,
you asked me the same question about Eric all and
then what happened?
Speaker 4 (03:55):
He goes down for two years.
Speaker 2 (03:57):
Yeah. Comeback player of the year this year. I don't
care what they say about Patrick Mahomes.
Speaker 4 (04:02):
Here's the thing. You just want to make a wager
one way or the other.
Speaker 3 (04:06):
Keep the money in the pocket for now. The real
overall point is that we're even talking about it, right?
Speaker 4 (04:11):
Yes.
Speaker 3 (04:11):
In comparison to say Ruben Bain, who's obviously connected. to
Howell both through the Bengals connection and also the short
arms T-Rex factor.
Speaker 4 (04:20):
And Bain has done nothing for two games. We saw
him up.
Speaker 3 (04:23):
Close get dominated by Marcus Mims. So, you know, the
fact that Howell's having success straight away, not just as
a pass rusher, which we all thought he could do,
but he's played.
Speaker 4 (04:31):
Well against the run.
Speaker 3 (04:32):
He's even dropped back into coverage a couple of times.
He's just looked like an all-around guy who looks like
he belongs at this level.
Speaker 4 (04:39):
That's what's important.
Speaker 3 (04:40):
He has a couple of things, obviously, working against him
in winning that award.
Speaker 4 (04:44):
One being, will he.
Speaker 3 (04:45):
Get enough coming numbers to get up there with this
deep defensive front that we just talked about with Cincinnati,
and will he actually be the guy to even lead
the team in sacks? We don't know about that just yet. Secondly,
he plays in Cincinnati, right? I mean, the guys who
play in New York and Kansas City and Dallas, the
Caleb Downs and the David Bailey's of the world will
(05:06):
probably get more eyeballs on him. So he'll have to
do something really special, actually break through and win the award.
But like I say, the fact that we're even just
discussing it is a great sign, and hopefully he just
stays upright the entire season. That's more important to me
than the hardware.
Speaker 2 (05:19):
I cannot think of a least sympathetic figure in the
entire country than Aaron Rodgers and his punchable face. But
he is very immobile. He looks like a shell of himself.
He's almost my age. The Bengals have been really good
up front. Is there at least a little shred of
sorrow that somebody like me could work up for him
based on how things may unfold on Sunday?
Speaker 4 (05:41):
I mean, he's the Steelers quarterback.
Speaker 3 (05:44):
Any Steelers quarterback, if they were drowning, would you throw
him away for a second?
Speaker 4 (05:48):
I don't think so. Probably not.
Speaker 3 (05:52):
I get your point, but listen, I think back to
last year, he was in a similar situation, and on
Thursday night, he threw four touchdown passes against us, was
almost a hero, thank God for Joe Faleco, right? And
then in the second game, the Bengals actually knocked him out.
I barely remember that game, but they took him out
with a broken wrist, and what happens? Mason Rudolph comes in,
looks like prime MVP Aaron Rodgers, so I don't know,
(06:13):
maybe the best thing is to keep him in the
game but playing to his standard over the past couple
weeks which is as you said very poor near the
bottom of the league and really what I'm looking for
is that you know the Bengals front lines is truly
elite and like they've shown over the past two weeks
what they have they'll do what New England did to
Pittsburgh's offensive line which was you know completely uh dominated
(06:35):
and uh you know that's what the Bengals aspire to
to be as good as New England's defensive front I
think they can do that Pittsburgh's offensive line so far
this year has been Pretty patchwork. They moved their right
tackle and guard to the left side. That hasn't worked
out great. They spent a couple of premium picks, draft picks,
on guys who haven't really seen the field yet either.
It's a good time to take down that offensive line, probably,
(06:58):
and with Rodgers, as you say, an ancient, immobile.
Speaker 4 (07:01):
Guy playing behind it.
Speaker 3 (07:03):
A questionable offensive line. It's all set up for Cincinnati
to dominate the game up front once again, which I
hope they do so.
Speaker 2 (07:10):
Robert Weintraub's weekly Bengals column at Cincinnati.com or Cincinnati.com, CincinnatiMagazine.com.
You can read it now, my faux pas. Do the
Bengals have an Orlando Brown problem? And if so, how
in the short term do they fix it?
Speaker 3 (07:27):
Well, it seems like we just had this discussion last
week and it's only gotten worse, right? Well, I mean,
what did I say then? I said they're paying him
like a slightly below average left tackle in the league
and they're getting what they pay for. I think they
thought he wouldn't be quite this below average, you know,
in his defense. Obviously, Houston's defensive line poses, you know,
(07:48):
a significant problem for any left tackle. I think he
tends to get better as the season goes along, as
a lot of veterans do.
Speaker 4 (07:56):
Certainly in Cincinnati, they do.
Speaker 3 (07:57):
And I don't think he'll play as badly as he
did on Sunday going forward, most likely.
Speaker 4 (08:03):
And even Joe.
Speaker 3 (08:03):
Burrow said he didn't think Orlando played a bad game,
and he knows more than we do about it. So clearly,
maybe it won't be as bad going forward. But I
do think, I mean, listen, he's getting up there in years.
We've had this discussion, and what can they do about it?
We talked all summer about the fact that You know,
they were in deep trouble if they had to go
to one of the reserves off the bench in case
(08:25):
of injury. We didn't even bring up the idea of
replacing a tackle for cause, and yet here we are
a few weeks thinking Orlando may have to take a
seat on the bench. I don't think they're going to
go that route, not necessarily.
Speaker 4 (08:37):
Not yet, certainly. And, you know, what can they do
about it?
Speaker 3 (08:40):
I mean, unfortunately, that's one thing Zach Taylor and his
staff had a lot of experience at is scheming around
offensive line problems, right? And there's a lot of things
you can do from putting extra tight ends on that
side of the ball and chipping and running plays to
the other side of the field and getting the ball
out quickly. They know what they can do to mitigate
the problem. But, you know, going forward, your left tackle
(09:03):
is a weak link on your offense. That's obviously never
a good thing. So hopefully we'll see Orlando take a
step up in his playing.
Speaker 4 (09:12):
I think he's capable of it. We just we need
to see it.
Speaker 2 (09:16):
Do you think anybody in the league has a more
punchable face than Aaron Rodgers?
Speaker 3 (09:21):
I wish I could think of a German term for
a face that you want to punch. It's like, it's
one of those super long German ones.
Speaker 4 (09:30):
All right. But no, to answer the question shortly, absolutely not.
Speaker 3 (09:34):
I think the Bengals could probably get a booth line
up there, make some money by, you know, pay $ 5
and punch Aaron Rodgers in the face.
Speaker 4 (09:43):
They'd make a mint off that. Yeah. Well done. All right.
Speaker 2 (09:51):
We'll talk next week, man. Thanks so much.
Speaker 3 (09:53):
Can't wait, Mo.
Speaker 4 (09:54):
Thank you.
Speaker 2 (09:54):
It's our guy, Robert Weintraub, writes a weekly Bengals column.
I'll get the publication right now, CincinnatiMagazine.com. Jay Morrison writes
for Bengals Talk, and he's going to BengalsTalk.com, and he's
going to join us next.
Speaker 3 (10:06):
Cincinnati's ESPN 1530.
Speaker 2 (10:10):
Traffic. From the UC Health Traffic Center.
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