Over the past twenty years or so, the rivalry between the Cincinnati Bengals and the Pittsburgh Steelers has been pretty extreme. While Pittsburgh has certainly had the most post season success, there is certainly no love lost between the two fan bases. Pittsburgh fans love to say that they don’t even think of Cincinnati as a rival compared to the successful Raven’s teams of the mid-2000s and that just adds insult to injury for fans in Southwest Ohio. While many of these contests have come down to the wire, the number one trait of divisional rivalries in the AFC North is the overwhelming physicality in those games.
Pittsburgh Fans Still Hold a Grudge against Bengals Linebacker Ten Years Later
While there were plenty examples of the Pittsburgh team making plenty of dirty plans against Cincinnati including a play in 2016 where a Pittsburgh player cracked back against unsuspecting punter Kevin Huber and broke his jaw. If you wonder the validity of the reputation of how physical Pittsburgh defenses were in their hay day, I can tell you from years and years of watching Cincinnati suffer dirty hits from that team that the reputation is warranted. After suffering enough of those dirty hits, Cincinnati decided to go out and get a physical playmaker of their own.
In 2012, Cincinnati drafted linebacker Vontaze Burfict in the second round of the NFL Draft. While he was expected to go far higher based on his talent, the star linebacker from Arizona State fell to the second round due to perceived character issues. During his entire tenure in Cincinnati, Burfict never had any issues off the field and his only crime that has inflicted so much damage to his reputation over the years is that he plays hard and was never shy to deliver a violent hit.
The biggest moment for Burfict came in the 2015 wild card game against the Pittsburgh Steelers. For some background, this was one of the most physical games that I had ever watched in person as Cincinnati players and fans alike had watched running back Giovani Bernard get knocked unconscious by linebacker Ryan Shazier. Where are all the Pittsburgh fans who love to complain about dirty hits from Burfict when their players constantly made hits like that? Living under a rock apparently.
After that hit, there was an emotional response from Cincinnati players and fans that pushed for a dramatic comeback attempt. That attempt was foiled when the infamous play occurred with Burfict lowering his shoulder and knocking Pittsburgh wide receiver Antonio Brown unconscious. I stand by my opinion that he was just attempting to deliver a big hit to dislodge the ball but the league and commentators all used this play to label Burfict as a dirty player. After the play, a chain reaction occurred that ended up handing the game to Pittsburgh after 30 yards in penalties delivered an easy chip shot game winning field goal.
Fans went berserk at the time and started throwing water bottles at the Pittsburgh players running off the field. While I was booing heavily at the time, I will admit that any sort of violence toward the players will inevitably come off as pretty trashy. Pittsburgh fans would go on to complain about every move Burfict made even after their wide receiver JuJu Smith-Schuster delivered a far dirtier crack back block on Burfict the following season.
Burfict recently made headlines during a TikTok video of him playing Madden where he asserted that he even after all of the fines and suspensions over the years, he never tried to be a dirty player except when he played Pittsburgh.
The definition of a scumbag
Vontaze Burfict:
“I didn’t hit people after the play all the time. Just the Steelers. F*ck the Steelers.”#steelers pic.twitter.com/OoCHZ7cmpB
— Matthew Luciow (@matthewluciow92) February 2, 2024
Now I can’t argue that Burfict was a tremendously physical player that while he would have been applauded as a playmaker 20 years before his playing career, with the obvious shift toward player safety in the NFL, he was going to be made an example of. The problem I have is the phony outrage from fans of a team that inflicted dirty hit after dirty hit for several decades. I remember back to the 2005 playoff game when superstar quarterback Carson Palmer was taken out of the game after a Pittsburgh defender dove into his knee and tore his ACL.
From the dirtiest and most physical team in the NFL for a twenty year period, clearly the problem for Steelers fans is that they don’t like physicality when their team is bested by it.
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