It was thought this week that Pittsburgh Steelers CB Joey Porter Jr. would shadow Cincinnati Bengals WR Ja’Marr Chase, but the Steelers decided to use Porter over WR Tee Higgins. I put it down. He had 14 receptions for 288 yards and a touchdown in his last game. Two games against the Steelers. Higgins had a strong performance with five receptions for 69 yards and one touchdown, but he also scored a penalty against Porter, who had four receptions on the day. After the Steelers won 44-38, head coach Mike Tomlin explained the decision to play Porter and Higgins primarily against each other.
“Tee’s a scoundrel. He is. You can’t let him beat you up while the officials are going to call it what they call it. Sometimes I absorb some of that. , and that goes along with it. I can’t afford to be beaten by such a big man. I hope we do it cleanly enough that we don’t get hit with too many penalties. We didn’t have much success in that regard today, but we keep working on things that we don’t want to do. One is to get that guy to corner us,” Tomlin said. He spoke via the team’s YouTube channel..
While Chase has had an absurd season, the Steelers have traditionally done a good job of limiting Chase while Higgins causes matchup problems. The Steelers decided to focus their efforts on bigger receivers with the long, athletic No. 1 corner in Porter, and I’m sure it didn’t work out as well as the Steelers had hoped, but from Peyco Stadium. I left. With victory. For the most part, the team also did a good job against Chase. He had just five receptions for 36 yards before picking up a big 50-yard reception late in the game that appeared to be a coverage failure.
But Chase didn’t take over the game, and neither did Higgins. Cincinnati’s offense is dangerous, with Chase and Higgins leading the way in the passing attack, while the Steelers can run enough offense to limit both of them, and the offense keeps pace with the Bengals’ high-powered offense. For hung 44 points.
There’s no question that Porter and Pittsburgh’s secondary could have done a better job, and Porter’s day was especially tough given the penalty and missed interception in the end zone. But at the end of the day, a win is a win, and the decision to replace Porter with Higgins worked, at least in the sense that Pittsburgh handled Chase for the majority of the game.
