Joe Flacco Notes Bengals 'Not Matching' Their Phases As Season Slips Away

 The Bengals' offense killed them on Sunday after a month-plus of great football from Joe Flacco and that unit. 

Cincinnati's quarterback was abysmal on Sunday, passing for 199 yards and one score while adding a pick-six en route to a 23-40 completion mark. The Bengals' offense gave up 14 points on its own and wasted the team's first good defensive performance since Week 1.

"I thought they did a lot of good things today, you know, just a shame the way we're kind of not matching each other right now and playing both sides as well as we can at the same time," Flacco said about the defense.

The two sides are playing volleyball back and forth to see who can be more inept. The Steelers clearly had a better game plan ready for Ja'Marr Chase today after giving up 16 catches to the superstar a few weeks ago.

He had just three catches for 30 yards on 10 targets. Flacco's inaccuracy and normal-level of play this decade caught up to him coming out of the bye week.

"Well, I think they made sure that they probably did it more, just they probably had a couple guys on him more often than they did in the first game," Flacco said about the issues feeding Chase. "That's why they're a good football team. And we knew they were going to make adjustments and come in here and play better than they did the first time we played them. And we got to match that."

Cincinnati welcomes the betting favorite to land the AFC's No. 1 seed next week to Paycor Stadium, the New England Patriots. They need to win six of the final seven games to have any shot at a playoff berth.