Bengals-Steelers Rivalry

[Dill]

(09-15-2018, 07:00 PM)Whatever Wrote: Personally, winning is the best revenge.

It will be tough to change the nature of the rivalry until Tomlin is gone.  It started with Cowher and has escalated throughout Tomlin's tenure.  The Steelers have an assistant coach, Joey Porter, who led a gang beating and robbery of then Bengals OT Levi Jones during their playing days.  Those coaches are encouraging the violence because the refs won't call it on them and the Bengals get painted as thugs when they retaliate.  Even watching Shazier paralyze himself wasn't enough to make Juju think twice about cheap shotting Burfict.

There's not much the Bengals can really do.  They took it and took it for years, and it didn't work.  In recent years, they started firing back and the threat of mutually assured destruction hasn't been a deterrent.  All they've done is shed light on the fact that Burfict is a dirty player and allowed the national media to vilify them to protect the image of the more popular team. 

If the NFL wants it to stop, the NFL needs to make it stop.  The refs need to start tossing players at the beginning of the game for shoving matches and pile cleaning.  That's always how it starts, then it escalates from there.  They need to hold Tomlin and Lewis accountable and start suspending them for their team's behavior.  If that doesn't work, start taking draft picks away.  I don't think the NFL really wants it to stop, though.  Bengals-Steelers has become the massive multicar crash at a NASCAR race.  People tune it to watch the carnage.  That's why they keep putting the games in prime time.

Helpless and hopeless. 

The Bengals could go 8-0 in the fist half of the season, and 3-0 against their division foes, fanning hope and talk of the first Marvin playoff win--only to crash and burn in the final weeks of the season.