Right before the Cincinnati Bengals host the Pittsburgh Steelers in Week 1, former Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger hit the podcast scene and proceeded to hit the Bengals, too.
Big Ben, appearing on his own podcast named Footbahlin, talked about playing within the AFC North and said that at times he feared playing the Bengals due to dirty or cheap plays.
“When you played Baltimore, you knew it was going to be a physical football game… Clean, just physical,” Roethlisberger said. “But when we played Cincinnati, there was a stretch of games there, years then when you played them, you almost didn’t want to play…There were times I was almost fearful to play because I was afraid I was going to get hurt because of something dirty. Something cheap.”
In context, Big Ben’s comments aren’t totally out of line. There was a stretch of time there where Bengals-Steelers games were borderline uncomfortable to watch because it seemed inevitable a scrap or two would happen.
But…this narrative the Ravens were a respectable rival and the Bengals weren’t is silly, especially given the long line of dirty things done by players within Big Ben’s own organization, ranging from Antonio Brown and Mike Mitchell to Joey Porter and James Harrison, among others.
Either way, those days of Bengals-Steelers street fights are things of the past, especially with the Bengals on to contention and the Steelers looking to rebound quickly in the post-Big Ben era.
