CINCINNATI--The wildly inexplicable occurred at Paul Brown Stadium yesterday. Going against the logic that would normally prevail in a meeting between the Steelers and Cincinnati Bengals, an actual football game broke out.
At last, a fan-pleasing event. At last, two teams doing an impersonation of the St. Louis Rams. At last, not the boring tedium of those thoroughly unclassic defensive struggles that have dominated the season.
These were two teams with superb running games -- not a succession of 3-yard runs off tackle. These were two teams that could throw the ball down the field.
The Steelers rumbled for 185 yards on the ground. The Bengals rambled for 209 yards.
But that wasn't the end of it. Kordell Stewart threw for three touchdowns -- one fewer than he had thrown all season.
The result was a 48-28 Steelers' victory. It was as many points as the Steelers had scored in any two previous games.
And Bill Cowher hated it.
Well, not all of it. But enough of it that despite the fact the Steelers ended a three-game losing streak, despite the fact Stewart played his best game of the season, despite the fact the passing game was not dominated by a series of drops, Cowher was about three seconds into his postgame news conference when he turned his attention to the team's run defense.
"Right now, in regards to our running defense, I don't want to stand up here and say something that I shouldn't say without having a look at the video. Right now, our run defense is the one thing we have to get rectified."
The Bengals' Corey Dillon ran for 128 yards -- including 82 in the first half -- just a week after Jacksonville's Fred Taylor shredded the Steelers for 234 yards.
The Bengals -- a team that had been shut out three times this season, a team that had scored more than 16 points only once -- scored 21 points in the first 36 minutes. The Steelers didn't seem capable of stopping them.
Brandon Bennett ran 37 yards for a touchdown on the Bengals' first possession. Dillon ran 20 yards for a touchdown on the Bengals' second possession. The Bengals moved 80 yards in 10 plays on their first possession of the second half to move within three points, 24-21.
The game had the look of the last team with the ball winning.
Safety Lee Flowers put it best. "We were playing like we played when we were 0-3."
But late in the third quarter, the Steelers' defense found itself long enough to turn the game around. The player in the middle of it was outside linebacker Jason Gildon.
With the Steelers leading, 31-21, Gildon broke through to sack quarterback Akili Smith and force a fumble that was recovered by Chris Sullivan on Cincinnati's 7. Jerome Bettis scored on the next play.
Gildon wasn't finished.
Four plays after the ensuing kickoff, with Smith in a shotgun formation at his own 38, the snap went over his head.
"I saw it was a high snap," Gildon said. "I wanted to get back there before he had a chance to recover."
Gildon wisely fell on the loose ball. When a player reached for him, Gildon thought it was one of the Bengals making certain he was down. Instead, it was Joey Porter.
"Joey pulled me up and told me to run. I just took off for the end zone."
He ran 22 yards for the score, the second touchdown off a fumble recovery of his career. In the space of six snaps, the Steelers had scored 14 points with Gildon and the defense most responsible. Still, it wasn't enough to make Cowher feel good about the defense.
"Certainly it's a problem," he said, but declined to go further until looking at tape.
Flowers was less cautious.
"The first quarter was horrible, the second quarter was horrible, the third quarter was a little better," he said. "We've got to get back to the things that got us here."
Still, it was a win, and those have become a precious commodity with the Steelers. A loss to the Bengals likely would have sent the season careening out of control.
As it is, the Steelers are 6-6 and still flirting with respectability. They've stopped their second three-game losing streak. But based on the way they played yesterday and with the quality of the opposition immediately ahead -- the Oakland Raiders, the New York Giants and the Washington Redskins -- they're looking hard at another one.
Bob Smizik can be reached at bsmizik@post-gazette.com.
Smizik: Win fails to mask bigger concerns 
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