Steelers don't have answer for Bengals' 'picket fence' on late fourth-down play call

The picket fence isn’t just a basketball play made famous in the movie “Hoosiers.”

It’s also a defense the Cincinnati Bengals use when they try to keep opponents from converting from long distance. And it was the reason Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger didn’t throw a pass into the end zone late in a 24-10 loss to the Bengals on Sunday at Heinz Field.

Trailing by two touchdowns, the Steelers faced a fourth-and-10 from the Bengals 11 with 3 minutes, 9 seconds left in the game. The Bengals called timeout and returned with defensive backs stacked along the goal line.

“They have a type of defense – we call it the picket fence – where they just sit back,” Roethlisberger said. “We anticipated that.”

A touchdown on the play would have cut the deficit to seven points and given the Steelers a chance to get a stop on defense or try an onside kick with three minutes remaining.

Instead of Roethlisberger throwing into traffic, the play call was a swing pass to rookie running back Najee Harris. He caught the ball and continued to his right until he was forced out of bounds at the 12 for a 1-yard loss.

The result was met by boos from the remainder of the 58,076 fans in attendance.

“We were going to try to get it to him to get guys out front to block for him, see what he could do,” Roethlisberger said. “You’re a little limited from that far out on what you can except maybe throw a ball up. In hindsight, we wish we would have taken a shot in the end zone. I wish we would have done that.”

The swing pass was the 54^th of 58 throws Roethlisberger made in the game.

“We had fired all of our bullets at that juncture in terms of some of our play selection,” coach Mike Tomlin said. “It just wasn’t a good enough play to get in there.”