As requested, I'm making a post here to facilitate more of a discussion about the Bengals/Steelers game this week. I have to say, I'm pretty pumped for it, not only because I think it'll be a really good game but because it's on the national stage. The Bengals are coming off two really bad losses so how they respond against a good Steelers team will dictate the rest of our season.

I don't think it'd be wrong to call this a "must win" for the Bengals and maybe the Steelers. Not sure the Bengals will be able to recover if they start out 3-1 then go into the bye 3-4. But I question whether the Bengals are capable of coming out and dictating the game against a team that we historically (and recently) have a tough time playing. We seem to take on the personality of our HC and unlike Harbaugh, Lewis shows absolutely zero emotion. He has no fire and it's reflected in a team that plays soft at times and lacks a sense of urgency.

Feel free to leave some questions here and I'll be happy to answer them. I'm not looking to get into any kind of flame war with you guys so I'd appreciate if you'd keep it civil since I think this could be a really good discussion of the state of the two teams.

Couple questions to get this started:

Is Pouncey likely to play? What's the state of the OL should Pouncey play/not play?

What's your situation with the running game? Dwyer to start or is Mendenhall likely to be ok?

Defensively, what are your strengths and weaknesses at this point in time?