Dugger’s play of the game ended the procession of field goals. With the Bengals in field goal range on third-and-9, Nick Herbig and T.J. Watt collapsed the pocket and the hurried Flacco threw a pass straight into Dugger’s chest at the Pittsburgh 26. The new strong safety returned the interception 73 yards for the touchdown that gave the Steelers a 20-9 lead with 37 seconds left in the third quarter. A block on the return by Herbig sprung Dugger to paydirt.<\/p>\n
The Bengals stayed within a score on a 48-yard McPherson field goal. The Bengals drove to the Pittsburgh 29, courtesy of a Jalen Ramsey personal foul during a fourth-and-1 timeout. Ramsey was ejected, but a sack by Herbig effectively kept the Bengals to the field goal, which cut the Steelers’ lead to 20-12 with 9:41 to play.<\/p>\n
The Steelers clinched the win on their ensuing possession. Gainwell, in full-time for an injured Warren, caught a 5-yard touchdown pass from Rudolph to put the Steelers ahead 27-12 with 3:40 to play. Gainwell’s 20-yard catch on third-and-11 and his 28-yard catch of a screen converted a first-and-23 to set up his touchdown on the next play.<\/p>\n
On the Bengals’ next snap, Brandin Echols forced a fumble by Noah Fant. Pierre scooped it up and returned it 33 yards for the game’s final score with 3:22 left.<\/p>\n
In replacing Rodgers and his first-half passer rating of 106.5, Rudolph completed 12 of 16 passes for 127 yards and the TD pass to Gainwell to compile a 118.5 passer rating in his first extended appearance of the season.<\/p>\n
“He’s always delivered when called upon in the past. That’s why we value him,” Tomlin said of Rudolph. “His performance was consistent with what he’s done in the past for us. Not that we take it for granted; we don’t. We appreciate it.”<\/p>\n
Warren led the Steelers in rushing with 62 yards on 10 carries, but Gainwell gained 105 yards from scrimmage with 7 receptions for 81 yards leading the Steelers’ pass-catchers.<\/p>\n
“He also made a tackle on kickoff,” Tomlin said of Gainwell. “I value him as a football player first. We saw a lot of that, man, on his Philadelphia tape. He’s good in a lot of areas, including special teams. So we just respect what he brings to the table.”<\/p>\n
The 6-4 Steelers retain their division lead over the Baltimore Ravens while the Bengals fell to 3-7. The Steelers travel to play the 7-3 Chicago Bears next Sunday.<\/p>\n
“It feels good right now, but it’s about what happens moving forward, and it always is,” Tomlin said. “That’s just the nature of this thing. It’s sweet today. Tomorrow we go back to work because there’s big business waiting on us next week.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Dugger’s play of the game ended the procession of field goals. With the Bengals in field goal range…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":36344,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[19142,564,563,73,75,74,565,6029],"class_list":["post-36343","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-pittsburgh","tag-cincinnati-bengals-at-pittsburgh-steelers-2025-reg-11","tag-featured","tag-non-sponsored","tag-pittsburgh","tag-pittsburgh-headlines","tag-pittsburgh-news","tag-sights-and-sounds","tag-xtra-points"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36343","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36343"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36343\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/36344"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36343"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36343"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36343"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}