OddsFoundry · Film Room · NFL Week 3
Bengals at Steelers
Pittsburgh has one offensive touchdown in 26 drives. Cincinnati's defense has four new regulars and two good games. The market prices the tape. My sim still carries part of a 2025 Bengals defense that ranked 28th against the pass, and that is the whole gap between Bengals by 3.5 and a coin flip.
Lens
Findings
Bengals side on the left, Steelers side on the right. Grades compare both units to league average, so a good offense against a good defense lands near zero. Hatched bars are low confidence: the tape and the baseline disagree on who owns that matchup. Ranks in brackets are out of 32.
X's and O's
Charted from nflverse play by play and FTN charting for both 2026 games. Where a number says league, it is the 2026 league average through Week 2.
Bengals offense vs Steelers defense
Dan Pitcher's offense · Patrick Graham's first year as DC
- Pittsburgh wins with four. Without a blitz the Steelers allowed -0.50 EPA per dropback and got 7 sacks on 40 charted dropbacks. On 13 blitzes they allowed +0.05 EPA and 10.8 yards per dropback with no sacks. Watt has 4 sacks, Highsmith 3 sacks and 5 QB hits.
- Burrow wants four too. Against four rushers he is at +0.27 EPA per dropback on 49 charted dropbacks. Against the blitz: -0.62 on 24, with 3 sacks. Houston sacked him 5 times on 36 dropbacks in Week 2, and SI reports he battled a rib injury in that game. Cincinnati's 8.2 percent sack rate is 24th. Pittsburgh's 13.2 percent is 1st.
- Higgins has the downfield role. Higgins has 25 percent of targets and 53 percent of Burrow's air yards, 154 yards on 16 targets. Chase has 20 percent and 29 percent, 87 yards on 13. In Burrow's eight 2025 games Chase drew 31 percent. Burrow's average depth of target is 6.0 yards (league 8.0) and 32 percent of his throws are at or behind the line. Iosivas (thumb, 57 percent of snaps) is out.
- The run game is the cleaner edge. Cincinnati is 13th in EPA per rush. Pittsburgh's run defense is 20th, allows 4.3 yards a carry and gives up a 57 percent success rate off tackle and 55 percent outside. The catch: the Bengals saw eight or more in the box on 13 of 47 runs (league 10 percent) and gained 1.6 a carry there, against 4.9 with seven or fewer. Pittsburgh loads the box on 16 percent.
- The No. 1 pass defense has an asterisk. Atlanta, the Week 1 opponent, posted -0.47 EPA per play against Carolina, and Pittsburgh held it to -0.61 per dropback. New England threw for 7.8 yards per dropback in Week 2. Jamel Dean (ankle) is questionable after playing 92 percent of snaps, and Joey Porter Jr. has not played this season.
Steelers offense vs Bengals defense
Mike McCarthy and OC Brian Angelichio, year one · Al Golden's defense
- Rodgers is 0 for 12 downfield. Twelve throws of 20+ air yards, no completions, -1.09 EPA per throw. Seven went to Metcalf, who has 8 catches on 19 targets for 67 yards. Pittsburgh is 31st in EPA per dropback (-0.41) and 31st in success rate.
- It is not the schedule. Atlanta and New England allowed +0.14 and +0.07 EPA per play in their other games. Pittsburgh posted -0.30 and -0.36 against them. That is 0.62 points per drive (league 2.04), one offensive touchdown and 5 of 24 on third down.
- Cincinnati rushes four and waits. The Bengals blitzed 11 percent of dropbacks, fewest in the league, and still sack 8.2 percent (7th). Pittsburgh has been worse without a blitz (-0.42 EPA on 66 dropbacks) than with one (-0.36 on 23). Jonathan Allen and Cedric Johnson have 2 sacks each.
- The tight end is the open door. Tight ends caught 17 of 21 targets against Cincinnati for 9.5 yards a target and +0.47 EPA (league +0.27). Dalton Schultz went 12 for 14 for 140. Freiermuth is 9 for 10 for 78 and the only Steeler with 5+ targets and positive EPA. Yahoo has him at 49 catches, 619 yards and 6 touchdowns in 10 games against the Bengals.
- No run game to lean on. Pittsburgh is 22nd in EPA per rush and 7 inside runs went for 12 yards with no successful play. Cincinnati allows 2.6 a carry inside and is 3rd in EPA per rush. Dexter Lawrence and Jonathan Allen, both new, play 60 percent of snaps inside. Dowdle (toe) is out and Warren (shoulder) is questionable, but Yahoo reports the team expects him to play.
The sim
150,000 games, drive by drive, at 10.8 drives a team with a small wind penalty on passing. The only dial that matters is how much weight the two 2026 games get against a trimmed 2025. The highlighted row is my number. The market spread sits between the 0.35 and 0.50 rows. The market total sits between the 0.15 and 0.25 rows.
| Weight on 2026 film | Steelers | Bengals | Margin | Total | Bengals -3.5 covers | Over 42.5 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0.00 | 27.5 | 22.0 | PIT +5.5 | 49.6 | 26.2% | 68.1% |
| 0.15 | 23.2 | 21.1 | PIT +2.1 | 44.2 | 34.1% | 53.8% |
| 0.25 | 20.2 | 20.3 | CIN +0.1 | 40.5 | 39.6% | 42.8% |
| 0.35 | 17.3 | 19.6 | CIN +2.3 | 36.9 | 45.8% | 32.6% |
| 0.50 | 12.9 | 18.5 | CIN +5.6 | 31.4 | 55.9% | 18.8% |
The film weight swings the margin from Steelers by 5.5 to Bengals by 5.6 and the total from 49.6 to 31.4. To get to Bengals -3.5 you have to put about 40 percent on two games. To get to 42.5 you have to put about 20 percent on them, a bit under my 25.
The card
My sim has this even straight up, and the hook over 3 does real work in a low total. It leans on the baseline: at 35 percent film Pittsburgh covers 54 percent, at 50 percent it drops to 44. Only at +3.5. At +3, pass. Kill: the Bengals defense is exactly what the tape says.
Under 57 percent in the sim, and every row with 25 percent or more on the 2026 film lands under. Pittsburgh scores 0.62 points a drive and both defenses are top 3 in EPA per play. The wind (12 to 15 mph, Covers has 14.9) is worth about a point. Without it the sim is 41.6 and this is a pass. Kill: the 2025 Bengals defense shows up, or a return or defensive score.
The run game is Cincinnati's edge in both lenses and Pittsburgh's run defense is the soft part of that unit. Brown has 16 and 20 carries and the Bengals are road favorites. At his 3.8 a carry he needs 17 carries. Kill: the Steelers stack eight in the box the way Tampa Bay and Houston did, or Cincinnati trails early.
The line prices the 2025 Chase, 31 percent of targets with Burrow. This year he has 20 percent and 9 catches in two games while Higgins gets the downfield work. Receptions over yards so one long catch cannot beat it. Kill: Iosivas's targets go straight to Chase.
What breaks it
The new Bengals defense is real
- Four new regulars and two strong games. If the tape is the truth the right film weight is closer to 0.50, where the Bengals cover 56 percent. Nothing in two games says Rodgers suddenly hits a deep ball.
Burrow beats the four man rush
- Pittsburgh's pass defense is Watt and Highsmith getting home without help. If the Bengals line holds, Burrow is +0.27 per dropback without a blitz, Higgins gets his shots, the Steelers need more than the 20 and 3 points they have scored, and the under goes with it.
Warren or Pittman sits
- Dowdle is out, so a Warren scratch leaves Pittsburgh without either back who has a carry this year. Pittman played 88 percent of snaps in Week 1 and the passing game fell from -0.32 to -0.49 EPA per dropback without him in Week 2. Inactives come out at 11:30.
How a row gets graded
Each row adds the offense's effect and the defense's effect relative to league average, then divides by a fixed scale and caps at 5. The 2026 film lens uses opponent-adjusted two-game rates on a wider scale, because two-game numbers swing about twice as much as full-season ones. The 2025 baseline keeps 70 percent of Cincinnati's offense (same QB and OC, but Flacco and Browning threw most of the 2025 passes), 60 percent of Cincinnati's defense (same DC, four new regulars), and 60 percent of both Pittsburgh units (new head coach, OC and DC). The sim runs 10.8 drives a team, the 2026 league average, and takes 0.02 EPA per dropback off both offenses for a 12 to 15 mph wind. No injury adjustments: B.J. Hill and Porter Jr. already missed time in the film, and a running back and a backup guard are not enough to move a unit.
| Row | Metric | Weight | 2026 film | 2025 base | Confidence |
|---|
Sources: nflverse play by play, snap counts and rosters, FTN charting (2026 Weeks 1 and 2, 2025 regular season). Injury reports from Bengals.com, Steelers.com and Yahoo Sports (Friday). Lines from DraftKings via SI, FanDuel Research and Covers. Props from SportsBettingDime and SI. Staffs from Steelers.com and Cincy Jungle. Weather from Covers and Yahoo Sports. Context from the Bengals.com scouting report. Entertainment and research only.
Original report and source attribution · All Film Rooms · Official board
Entertainment and editorial research only. Source estimates are reproduced here; no new simulation was run for this publication.