Jacksonville's cornerback A.J. Bouye heard what Ben Roethlisbgerger said about wanting a rematch with the Jags after his disappointing performance back in Week 5 of the regular season, and needless to say Bouye wasn't pleased. Bouye stated, "Be careful what you wish for. This what he wanted. This is what he's going to get."
To make matters worse for Roethlisberger, many Jacksonville players took jabs at him, hinting he may not have 'it' anymore. Defensive tackle Malik Jackson said referring to Big Ben, "You could definitely tell he's a little older and he was getting a little tired." All that seemed to do was fire Roethlisberger up as he helped lead the team to 8 straight victories after his uncharacteristic performance against the Jags.
Le'Veon Bell has since given his take on the future matchup, "This offense is the best in the league and I don't think teams can stop us, we can only stop ourselves. They have to play the run now, they have to play play-action. We can play first-and-10, drop back pass. How are you going to defend Martavis, AB deep, Juju across the middle, whatever?" Bell said in an interview with the Post-Gazette.
Bell, Juju, and Martavis all had seemingly quiet performances against Jacksonville, so in addition to Big Ben they will be looking to bounce back this time around. Roethlisberger force fed Antonio Brown in the previous matchup, targeting AB 19 times. Now that Martavis Bryant and Juju Smith-Schuster have had their respective big performances since this matchup, Ben won't need to rely on Brown as heavily. As Bell stated "We can only stop ourselves," so we can only wait and see how Pittsburgh will respond to all of the criticism this upcoming Sunday.
