Steelers Tighten AFC North Race With Ravens
PITTSBURGH -- Everyone in the AFC North was locked in tight battles during the early window of Week 10 and the end results favored the Pittsburgh Steelers, who were one of the two teams in the division to move up the standings after knocking off the Green Bay Packers.
While the Steelers took down the Packers with a last-second interception on the goal line, the fourth-place Browns completed an upset of the first-place Ravens.
Cleveland trailed 31-17 with less than nine minutes left in the fourth quarter before Deshaun Watson hit Elijah Moore for a 10-yard touchdown pass to cut the deficit in half. Trailing by seven, the Browns defense made a massive play on the very next drive.
Cornerback Greg Newsome picked off Lamar Jackson and returned the ball 34 yards for a touchdown, but Hopkins missed the extra point, leaving the Browns still trailing by one with 8:16 to play in regulation. Hopkins got his redemption, however,
The Bengals made a surprising comeback late in their own game against the upstart Houston Texans but theirs fell short of a victory. Trailing 20-7 in the second half, Cincinnati battled back to tie the game at 27 with 1:33 left in the fourth quarter. But C.J. Stroud added another dramatic highlight to his impressive rookie campaign, leading the Texans 55 yards in six plays to set up a field goal from Matt Ammendola that clinched the 30-27 victory as time expired.
The order of the standings didn't change, but teams began to separate after three squads entered the day with identical records.
With their win and the Ravens' loss, the Steelers gained a half of a game on division-leading Baltimore. At 6-3, Pittsburgh trails 7-3 Baltimore by just half a game.
The Browns still sit in third place and the Bengals are in last for at least another week. And Cincinnati's hole only got bigger - they now sit a full game behind the Browns, who also own the tiebreaker currently by merit of their 24-3 win over the Bengals in Week 1.
The Steelers are in a position to perhaps leapfrog the Ravens and put a stranglehold on the division over the next two weeks, with divisional road trips to Cleveland and Cincinnati coming up in the next two weeks.
Pittsburgh's rarely looked pretty doing it, but they are 6-3 nonetheless and hit the back half of their schedule with strong odds to win the AFC North for the first time since 2020.
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