Bengals Receiver Says Steelers 'Gave Up' During Sunday's Beatdown

The Steelers haven’t turned in a losing season during head coach Mike Tomlin’s fifteen years at the helm, but with a severely declining quarterback and a spotty defense, it looks as if 2021 is the year the wheels finally come off.

Cincinnati Bengals wide receiver Tyler Boyd, a Pittsburgh native himself, thinks the Steelers are outright quitting on games.

"The last plays for them, they gave up. You could see it. They had three drops in a row and for a team to see that is giving us more power," Boyd said. "For a team to just lay down like that before the game is over. 

"They portrayed it to the whole nation on TV with what they were about and how they gave up, so we just gotta take advantage."

Boyd, of course, plays for Pittsburgh’s rival, so perhaps some gamesmanship was involved in his comments. But he’s right about the Steelers’ on-field effort so far: the team looked solid in Week One against a stout Bills team, but have steadily regressed in each of the past two weeks.

The beloved national franchise has deftly avoided any notions of a “rebuild” for nearly two decades—and collected a couple Super Bowl wins in the process, too—but this current iteration looks overmatched. And if they are, indeed, loafing on the field as Boyd says, the issues in Pittsburgh are only going to grow as the long, tiring NFL season marches on.