The Steelers and Bengals got into a scrap at midfield before their important divisional tilt on Sunday. The spark for the shoving match wasn’t immediately clear, but the fuse for this bomb has been burning for a while.

The animosity began in earnest in Week 8, when Bengals LB Vontaze Burfict injured Steelers RB Le’Veon Bell with what the Steelers felt was a dirty hit. Pittsburgh players, who said Burfict is “that kind of guy,” were also angry that he appeared to celebrate injuring Bell. One Steeler, Ramon Foster, sounded like he’d issued a threat when he said Burfict would “get his sooner or later.”

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Another Steeler, Vince Williams, issued a more specific threat on Twitter.

Bengals cornerback Adam “Pacman” Jones decided he’d had enough of the Steelers’ talking and made a video that he posted to Instagram in which he kept things very real.

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A video posted by @realpacman24 on Dec 13, 2015 at 7:59am PST

Well alright then.

Burfict was clearly not worried about these threats, even though his teammates wanted the NFL to take them seriously. Since the game, former NFLPA player rep Andrew Whitworth blamed the NFL's lack of action for the scuffle. In the first half Burfict enraged the Steelers again with a questionable hit on Ben Roethlisberger.

During the game, the Bengals were outplayed by Pittsburgh, and lost starting quarterback Andy Dalton for the rest of the season to a broken thumb. Do you think Jones was humbled by the loss?

Hopefully the actual threats never materialize, but as a rivalry, it doesn’t get more fun than this.

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