Ja’Marr Chase didn’t exactly hand the Steelers a warm welcome before Sunday night’s matchup.
The Bengals star receiver was asked about Cincinnati’s rivalry with Pittsburgh, and he made it clear he sees another AFC opponent as the bigger deal. Chase said the Steelers rivalry is “up there,” but not at the top of the list.
“It’s up there. I wouldn’t put it No. 1,” Chase said.
He then pointed to Kansas City as the rivalry that sits above Pittsburgh in his eyes, saying it is “way higher than that” when compared with the Steelers.
That’s not a throwaway comment, especially with a primetime meeting between Cincinnati and Pittsburgh on deck. The Bengals and Chiefs have crossed paths in back-to-back AFC Championship Games in 2021 and 2022, and since Chase entered the league in 2021, the two teams have played four straight one-score games in the regular season.
Still, Chase’s comments are the kind that can linger when these teams meet.
The Bengals and Steelers have plenty of recent history of their own, and last year’s Week 11 game got chippy fast. Pittsburgh rolled to a 34-12 win at Acrisure Stadium, but the score wasn’t the only thing people remembered. Early in the fourth quarter, Chase and Jalen Ramsey were jawing before things escalated into a scuffle, and Ramsey took a swipe at Chase.
Ramsey was ejected and later told reporters that Chase spit at him.
“He snatched my mouthpiece off my facemask, and that’s when I pushed his facemask... that was just a little scuffle,” Ramsey said. “But the refs told us right there lie, 'Aye y’all, chill, no more of this'... as soon as he spit, it was f*** that.”
Chase was suspended for one game after the incident, and Ramsey was fined $14,491.
There wasn’t any carryover from that confrontation in the teams’ Week 3 meeting, which Pittsburgh won 30-27, but there’s no reason to expect this matchup to be quiet. Both teams enter Week 10 at 6-2, both are riding four-game winning streaks, and both sit atop the AFC North. That makes this one feel bigger than a standard divisional game.
The Steelers are walking into a tough road environment for a primetime game, but they’ve handled Cincinnati well away from home in recent years. Pittsburgh lost at Paycor Stadium in Week 7 last season, 33-31 on Thursday Night Football, but that was one of very few setbacks there. The Steelers have lost on the road in Cincinnati just three times since 2014, four times since 2010 and six times since 2000, the year Paycor Stadium opened.
So while the setting should be loud and the stakes are high, Pittsburgh has shown it can mute that crowd before. Whether that history matters again is another question.
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