Bengals quarterback Joe Flacco threw for 342 yards and three touchdowns in Thursday night's 33-31 win over the Steelers, but the pass defense wasn't the only culprit for the loss.

Chase Brown ran 11 times for 108 yards and the Bengals posted 142 yards on the ground after reaching a high of 85 rushing yards in the first six weeks of the season. They had 97 of those yards in the first half and defensive end Cam Heyward focused on that area when discussing the reasons for the loss.

""It's not the secondary; that’s a cop-out," Heyward said, via Brooke Pryor of ESPN.com. "I think the front line, we got to control the line of scrimmage a lot better. I'm pissed off. We didn't take care of our job . . . they were last in rushing, and the way we gave it up today that takes the cake. We got to stop the f—king run. That's as simple as that."

In addition to the defensive foibles, the Steelers turned the ball over twice without forcing any of their own so there were plenty to places to go when it came to assigning blame for what went wrong in Cincinnati.