AFC Notes: Nick Chubb, Russell Wilson, Bengals, Browns, Steelers

Bengals

• The Bengals hosted nine defensive players for workouts on Tuesday, including DE Nelson Ceaser, DE David Ugwoegbu, S Akeem Dent, S Jaylen Key, LB Joe Giles-Harris, LB Chris Russell, LB Craig Young, CB Kaleb Hayes, and CB Carlton Johnson, per Howard Balzer. 
• Of this group, Cincinnati signed Key and Giles-Harris to their practice squad. 

Browns

In his eighth game since returning from a brutal knee injury, Browns RB Nick Chubb suffered a broken foot that will end his season. Cleveland RB Jerome Ford described what losing Chubb means to the locker room and explained how they will honor Chubb by using his work ethic as a guideline to end the season. 

“Yeah, it’s real hard to see,” Ford said, via Chris Easterling of the Akron Beacon Journal. “Kind of like you said, seeing all the work that he’s put in to be on the field, and then him having to turn around and have another injury like this. It’s sad to see. I know the type of guy Nick is, he’s just back to work.”

“Just making sure we finish out the season strong. Just kind of taking it how he would and taking it day by day. Making sure we put the work in throughout the week so that we can get what we want out on game day. Playing hard on Sundays and trying to win out.”

Steelers

Steelers LB Elandon Roberts downplayed the team’s loss against the Eagles and said that a small bump in the road could ultimately help them get to where they want to go.

“If you have to learn a lesson, a quick lesson, in a December football game against a different conference, sometimes it could be a benefit,” Roberts said, via ESPN. “I’ve been on the other side of that, and at the end of the year I still was holding what we all wanted to hold. I’m not using that for any type of pat on the back, but I’m using it as a reason to move forward in the right direction, but we need to fix what we need to fix quickly.”

Roberts believes the team has the mental makeup to succeed and will work towards fixing their mistakes against Philadelphia.

“One thing about our team is we’re very mature,” Roberts said. “Our younger guys are very mature as well, so you just keep the noise out. I think the noise can maybe blindside an immature team, but with us, it’s a very mature team, and hey, hats off to the Eagles. They came in today, and they won the game. Period. There’s no excuses behind it. But what we can do, we can look at this film hard, we can fix what we need to fix [on] offense, defense and special teams.”

Steelers QB Russell Wilson said the team simply got outplayed and they need to get back to the drawing board and respond positively this week.

“They played way better than us,” Wilson said. “It’s unacceptable how we played. I think we feel like we got to be sharper. And so we just got to stay the course and know that obviously we got a big week coming up, we got to respond, we got to get ready to go and that’s where our focus has to be.“