The Bengals and Steelers renew one of the most intense rivalries in football on Sunday. And the Bengals know it will be important to apply limits to the intensity.
“That’s our rivalry but one thing about us this year we have to keep our poise,” receiver A.J. Green recently told PFT Live. “I think the biggest thing for us is to go out there and play our game. Don’t read into the media like that. You know they’re gonna try to find something to get this thing going again. We’ve just got to go out there and play. Play our game and we’ll be fine.”
Things weren’t fine the last time Pittsburgh and Cincinnati got together. A lack of poise gave the Steelers 30 yards of field position at a time when it seems the Bengals would score their first playoff win since January 1991.
Green will have no problem with poise; he rarely if ever shows emotion. But he’ll need to exert a high degree of leadership over any of his teammates who may be inclined to lose their cool in one of the rare situations in pro football where the players of two different teams seem to genuinely dislike each other.