PITTSBURGH — I’m sure those gusty winds helped. But let’s give credit where it’s due: The Pittsburgh Steelers beat the snot out of Ja’Marr Chase on Sunday.

They hit him. They punched him (maybe for good reason). They swarmed him. They disrupted him. They got right up in his face and trash-talked him — and they ultimately frustrated him to the point where Chase appeared to spit on Steelers safety Jalen Ramsey and later lie about it.

“I didn't spit on nobody,” Chase told reporters.

Ramsey said otherwise, as did a damning video from Austin Briski of FOX 19 in Cincinnati.

Bottom line: The Steelers refused to let one man beat them — the way Chase had a month earlier in Cincinnati — and scored a very necessary 34-12 victory over an absolute dumpster fire of a football franchise.

The hopeless Bengals fell to 3-7. They’re done. Maybe somebody could tell them Kenneth Gainwell is leaking out of the backfield again, and maybe somebody could try to cover him this time.

In Round 1 on Oct. 16th, Chase was targeted 23 times and caught a franchise-record 16 passes in the Bengals’ 33-31 victory in Cincinnati.

In Round 2, the Steelers held Chase to two catches for 14 yards until he added a 16-yard catch in garbage time (I’m surprised Pat Narduzzi didn’t call a Bengals timeout so they could make the score look better).

The secondary has taken its share of deserved heat this season. It was outstanding Sunday, working in tandem with a strong pass rush.

Ramsey wound up getting kicked out of the game (Chase didn’t, somehow), but not before he put a stamp on it with some hellacious hits and lockdown coverage.

Joey Porter Jr. played a big-time game, whether he was covering Chase or Tee Higgins, and James Pierre has been something of a revelation. He scored the game-clinching touchdown.

The rematch clearly displayed the Steelers’ newfound stability at the safety position, as Mike Tomlin mentioned afterward.

And that begs a question: Why did the New England Patriots give the Steelers — a team they might be facing down the road — an apparently good player (Kyle Dugger) at a position of desperate need? It boggles the mind.

Dugger made the play of the game when he stepped in front of a Joe Flacco pass and returned it 73 yards for a touchdown to make it 20-9 (T.J. Watt and Nick Herbig helped make it happen by hammering Flacco from either side).

That’s what teams are supposed to do to Flacco, by the way. He has authored a great comeback story these past few years. He throws a ton of touchdown passes. But he also throws the ball to the other team a lot. He’s been intercepted 24 times in his past 22 games.

When the Steelers get leads, they get turnovers. It’s that simple. Where this goes, I do not know. It was only the Bengals. But for one day at least, the defense redeemed itself.

Meanwhile …

— Mason Rudolph played better than Aaron Rodgers and looked like a viable alternative if Rodgers remains out, or if he struggles.

Then again, it was only the Bengals, and much of the damage was done on simple throws to Gainwell.

Rudolph went 12 for 16 for 127 yards a touchdown and 118.5 passer rating. He gets high marks for staying ready, going in cold and getting the job done. He’s a pro.

— If there is one guarantee coming out of this game, it’s this: Mt. Washington is going to win Kyle Brandt’s “Angry Run” award on NFL Network. It looked like a video game when Darnell Washington took a second-quarter pass and started swatting Bengals defenders like flies.

First, he stiff-armed Cam Taylor-Britt. Then, he ran through Geno Stone. Finally, he blasted DJ Turner II 5 yards backward.

“That’s like a gnat hitting the windshield,” said CBS play-by-play man Kevin Harlan.

Three gnats, actually. Or flies. Your choice.

It was a wildly entertaining play, as was Jaylen Warren’s karate kick on Turner at the end of a run. That one evoked memories of Antonio Brown jump-kicking Browns punter Spencer Canning on a punt return.

— That was a legit call on Watt for roughing the passer. You can’t pile-drive the quarterback as a way to finish him off.

Also, Connor Heyward was positively stopped short on his second tush-push attempt. How that doesn’t get called correctly, or corrected correctly, is beyond me.

On the other side, in what was a poorly officiated game, DK Metcalf did not commit offensive pass interference on a big second-half pass play.

— The Steelers have now gone 60 straight games without scoring more than seven points in the first quarter. They extended their own record.

— Bengals coach Zac Taylor didn’t exactly bathe himself in glory. Besides squandering timeouts left and right, he went for two way too early, failing on a terrible call — a Wildcat play to Chase Brown that motioned Flacco.

That left the Steelers with an 11-9 manpower advantage, if you include Brown as the ball carrier and nobody bothering to cover Flacco split wide.

Taylor is 21-23 since the beginning of the 2023 season.

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