"Only thing is frustrating is that we lost to Pittsburgh," Dunlap said. "They didn't beat us, in my opinion."
The Bengals appeared to be the better team coming in. Had a better record, at least, off to the fourth 4-1 start in the Marvin Lewis era.
And Cincinnati maintained its poise. Sure, the action was chippy at times, but no personal fouls, ejections or other nonsense broke out (at least not until after the final whistle). And the Bengals played well enough, on offense, defense and special teams, to expect victory. They had a 21-20 lead with 1:18 to play.
But the outcome against the Steelers was the same.
"Sucks. Sucks," Kirkpatrick said. "I can imagine how we feel. Imagine how the fans feel. It sucks.
"I ain't got happy thoughts right now. I ain't got no happy thoughts."
In the locker room, an hour after the final play, Dunlap called for change.
"Insanity," he said. "Insanity is the act of when you keep doing things over and over and you keep expecting different results. We made some mistakes that we've made before. We've got to learn from them, once again."
But Dunlap didn't dig into details when asked for specifics.
Of course there were issues that led to Cincinnati's demise. Kirkpatrick was flagged for defensive holding on the Steelers winning drive. The defensive call on Antonio Brown's go-ahead touchdown reception was a cover zero blitz that failed miserably. Ben Roesthlisberger didn't get sacked and threw for 369 yards, and James Conner ran for 111 yards and two scores. The Bengals offense went dormant for most of the second half, gaining only 45 yards until the fourth-quarter drive that briefly pushed the Bengals ahead.
But nothing seemed catastrophic. The Bengals didn't gift field position or points by committing penalties for extracurricular activity or unnecessary roughness, twice forced Pittsburgh to settle for field goals in the red zone and the offense didn't have a turnover.
The game was played, for the most part it seemed, cleanly (measuring by this rivalry's standards). Nothing about the box score presents major issues. And the Bengals made winning plays in the fourth quarter, up until Brown's score.
But Dunlap inferred there was more going on.
"There's only one B out there," Dunlap said. "Everybody knows what they did and everybody had a role. There's not one person you can point to and say they didn't have a part, on or off the field."
Kirkpatrick had a different takeaway.
His answers didn't have an underlying message to decipher. And his frustration led to a blunt assessment when asked about the defensive holding penalty, called on a third-and-10 after Roesthlisberger's pass fell incomplete with just 29 seconds remaining.
"Trash. I don't even care if they fine me," Kirkpatrick said. "Trash. Trash call. C'mon man. Critical situation, (the referees) got to be right on with that."
Kirkpatrick differed with Dunlap about necessary wholesale adjustments. To him, the Bengals won four of their first five games for reasons that didn't need to be called into question.
"We ain't changing nothing," he said. "We went out there with the opportunity to win. We should have won. We've got to just finish. We've been finishing. At the end of the day, this (stuff) happened. We ain't changing nothing."
Whatever the reasons, the Steelers streak will continue, for a few more months at least. And next week presents another point of frustration for the Bengals fanbase: a primetime matchup. Cincinnati travels to Kansas City having lost six straight Sunday night matchups in the Andy Dalton-A.J. Green era.
Cincinnati will enter that game, according to Dunlap and Kirkpatrick, having just lost a benchmark test it shouldn't have failed.
And that's frustrating.
"We did enough to win the football game and we didn't finish," Dunlap said. "We've got to figure out why, address it, take that with us, let this game go and move on to KC."
FOLLOW ALONG: Bengals-Steelers live updates
MORE: Steelers-Bengals: 3 keys and predictions
MORE: Why Jessie Bates has a knack for making plays
BENGALS XTRA: Tez & JuJu: Did it go too far? How far will it go?