Enough with the inane, inapplicable narratives, please.

No, I mean it. Enough with all this nonsense about how Mike Tomlin's teams look down at lower-standing opponents, or how he doesn't have his athletes mentally ready for action or -- what's the latest one again? -- oh, right, how they can't win on Thursday nights on the road against other AFC North teams. 

For real! Thursday nights!

Next, maybe someone can get Grok, Siri or Gemini to research how all the above applies within which shoe's laces they're tying first, yeah?

Or, maybe someone can instead hear me out when I say that this scene below ...

... very, very, very much does matter.

That, my friends, is bad football.

____________________

Specifically, it's bad defensive football.

In fact, pretty much everything the Steelers' defense did in their bad -- no, brutal -- 33-31 loss to the previously bad -- no, brutal -- Bengals tonight here at Paycor Stadium, was rooted in the same sort of sorriness. And believe me, that's wholly independent of the day of the week, the evening's Zodiac alignments or any other calendar/cosmic fare.

Because what's amiss with the above scene is only everything: Cincinnati's runner is one Chase Brown, who's been a near-bust at age 25, who's born in Canada, who's got the pedigree of a fifth-round pick in the 2023 NFL Draft, and who'd been averaging, before the Steelers came around to coronate his career, an NFL-low-for-a-starting-back 2.5 yards per carry.

Here, he might as well have been some hybrid clone of Barry Sanders and Earl Campbell:

The yellow circle's on Keeanu Benton for a reason. Watch how casually he's spun at the point of attack. Then look at Patrick Queen failing to shed a single blocker. Then look at DeShon Elliott, of all people, whiff in the open field. Then take not one but two longer looks at whatever it was that Joey Porter was trying to achieve. Then finish it out through all 37 yards.

Overall for Brown: 11 carries, 108 yards! For a 9.8 average! More than four times his norm!

I asked Alex Highsmith what happened:

"We just gotta be more physical and get off blocks," he'd reply. "That's where it starts. We just gotta play physical, get off blocks and make tackles."

If only it were so simple.

Overall for the Bengals: 470 total net yards of offense! Without Joe Burrow! With 40-year-old quadruple-castoff Joe Flacco throwing for 342 of those, plus three touchdowns, in his 10th day since being traded here!

"I don't know where to even start," Queen would say when I asked what all went wrong. "I really don't."

"Seemed like everything," T.J. Watt would say. "It was an absolutely unacceptable performance from us on the defensive side of the ball."

Damned right it was. And if there were any exceptions to that, they went as unnoticed by me as all the presumably giddy passengers gliding down the old Esca-loser.

Let's name names, beginning with the biggest up front: Watt, resident superstar, was borderline invisible, failing to register a tackle and getting credited for a half-sack that Benton started. Cam Heyward, defensive captain, had two tackles. Highsmith, specialist in run-stopping, had one. 

Awful. All of 'em. At nearly everything.

Same went for everything in the back ...

... unless anyone can overlook Ja'Marr Chase's 16 catches for 161 yards -- no, my laptop's keys aren't sticking -- that set a Cincinnati record with such ease that I'm surprised anyone bothered to look it up. And yeah, that's Queen ricocheting right off him up there.

"That can't happen," Queen would say. "Just can't."

But it did.

As did Tee Higgins' own six catches for 96 yards. As did backup tight end Noah Fant, filling in for injured Mike Gesicki, going 4 for 4 on catch targets for another 44 yards. As did, in all likelihood, some fan plucked from the bleachers at halftime.

I asked Porter if, since most of the Steelers' early opponents came with only one top-shelf receiving threat, the Chase/Higgins tandem might've been too much for this secondary:

"No, not really," he replied. "We've got the guys to do it. They just gotta let us play. I wasn't a big fan of the calls today, with the officiating, but it is what it is. It's football."

Porter later explained to me, in detail, that he didn't appreciate either of the two pass-interference flags thrown his way. I understand that. I agree on both counts.

But my God ... Flacco targeted Chase 23 times. Five shy of the NFL record.

Let's not stop at the players.

____________________

The offense did close to all it could, I thought. I'd hoped to see 30 points against the NFL's 31st-ranked defense, and I saw 31 points. I'd hoped to see more touchdowns and fewer field goals, and there'd be four from Rodgers' arm, on top of his 249 passing yards. I'd hoped to see Jaylen Warren fully assert himself for the first time this season, and he was relentless in amassing 127 yards on 16 runs. I'd hoped to see better balance among the tight ends, and Pat Freiermuth came up crazy-big near the finish.

So I'm plenty comfortable dividing the praise/criticism thusly: Arthur Smith did a hell of a job, and I have no idea what in the hell Tomlin and/or Teryl Austin were doing.

Worse, the Bengals apparently did know.

When a Cincinnati reporter asked Chase if he was surprised by how the Steelers tried to defend him -- man-on-man, mostly -- given how often they've faced him over the years, Chase replied, "I got a lot of man. They doubled on third down, tried to mix it up a little. But no, they did exactly what we were expecting and hoping they'd do."

Expecting. Hoping.

Ow.

There are occasions when opponent tweaks that way after a victory, particularly amid a rivalry. Except that, here, it couldn't have been more obvious to all 66,000-plus souls inside.

Tomlin and Austin had sold themselves on the 'coverage people' concept -- Tomlin's term -- as far back as opening day at Saint Vincent College. They'd convinced themselves that their trio of Porter, Jalen Ramsey and Darius Slay would be so dominant in coverage that they'd get away with schemes few other teams could. They'd need three, and only three. The safeties could roam free. The inside linebackers could help in the box.

And yeah, the Bengals, because of Chase and Higgins, were part of that thought process.

Tomlin was asked afterward if he'd pondered doubling up Chase more, and he replied, "You know, we've played these guys a bunch. We double-teamed him some. We double-teamed 5 some."

That's Higgins.

"It's a mix when a mix is required," Tomlin continued. "There's many ways you can analyze it. But the bottom line is they made more plays than we did."

No, respectfully, it isn't.

The bottom line, as I see it here, wasn't the what. It was the why. It wasn't the loss as much as it was the regression of what's supposed to be the strength of the roster. And a grotesque regression at that.

On what went awry against the run, all Tomlin put forth was, "They popped a couple. They did, man. We didn't do a good enough job on gap control, and they popped a couple big ones. And it kinda created an unsteady environment."

Like it was a fluke. As opposed to what we've been witnessing, on and off, since the still-winless Other Jets were doing it to them back in the season opener.

Same problems. Same spots on the field. Same schemes. Same Cover 3 or Cover 2. Same four-man rush, no matter how mobile or immobile the quarterback. Same thing, over and over and over, exempting the seemingly palpable progress against the Vikings and Browns.

Anyone who's read my coverage over the years, hopefully, would attest I'm not one of those who credits only the players for the Ws, and who blames only the coaches for the Ls. That's not happening in this piece, and that's because, among other reasons, it'd be a million miles off the mark. To reiterate, this was on the entire defense, players and coaches alike.

Anyone who wishes to condense this some stupid schedule-based stat that stretches back two decades, hey, go nuts. If the eggheads at Pro Football Focus are free to express football opinions, so's everyone else in our society.

I'm not inclined to excuse this head coach that way.

This didn't happen because it was a Thursday. Or a short week. Or on the road. Or any of that.

It happened because of a general, and largely perennial, inability to match up defensively against either the strongest or, in this case, the most educated-about-the-Steelers opponents. And if the schedule's got anything to do with anything, it'll be that most of these precedents in recent years have been set in the month of January.