Led by quarterback Vinny Testaverde — who, at age 41, is more than three times older than the franchise he plays for — the Carolina Panthers executed a flawless 18-play, 80-yard opening drive that consumed 11 minutes of football time. In the real world, that’s enough time for a bored football writer to read the first 117 pages of Don DeLillo’s “Underworld.”

The Panthers jumped to a 7–0 lead against the Indianapolis Colts yesterday, throwing their bench and their fans into a fit of euphoria. The touchdown reminded me of Gene Wilder warning Cleavon Little not to shoot Alex Karras’s Mongo in “Blazing Saddles”: “It’ll just make him angry.” The Colts, playing their second tough team on the road in less than a week after beating Jacksonville on “Monday Night Football,” won the next 49 minutes, 31–0.

The TV announcers did their job, boosting the underdog — or in this case the undercat — by suggesting that the Panthers might have been able to make a game of it in the second half had not Testaverde injured his ankle in the second quarter. Maybe, and certainly David Carr could do nothing to move the ball in relief of Vinny. But it’s doubtful that Testaverde — who still has the arm but not the legs required to drop back and throw long — could have done much against what is probably the league’s best defense.

On offense, Indianapolis missed their great pass catcher, Marvin Harrison, not at all (Harrison apparently could have played, but the Colts were letting him heal as insurance against the Patriots next week). Reggie Wayne, whose yards per catch last season was a yard higher than Harrison’s, beat double coverage in the phlegmatic Carolina secondary for a sensational 59-yard touchdown in the third quarter, which put the Colts up by 17 points. After that, it looked like Peyton Manning was already studying New England game charts on the sidelines.

This is the third straight season the Colts won their first six games. In 2005, they won their first 13 games and ended up losing to the Steelers in the AFC Divisional Playoff. Last season, they won nine straight before stumbling and losing four of their next six; they then recovered to sweep the board. This year’s Colts look better than the 2005 and 2006 teams on both sides of the ball.

The Cincinnati Bengals’ disappointing 2007 season essentiallty ended yesterday in a torrent of boos, with 2:16 left in the first half, and the team trailing Pittsburgh 14–3. Faced with a fourth-an-done and a chance to get back in the game, the Bengals — or more precisely, head coach Marvin Lewis — wussied out and went for the chipshot field goal.

You’d think a team trying to claw its way up to the top of their conference, playing on their home turf, would go for it in a situation like that, wouldn’t you? That’s what Cincinnati fans thought, some of whom began pelting their team’s bench with paper cups the moment the field goal unit took the field to replace the regular offense. I’ve never seen anything like that — hometown fans abusing their own team. In fact, most of the TV audience didn’t see it, either, as the cameras discreetly pulled away after the first few beer-soaked missiles were launched. It should be noted that the cups all seemed to be directed toward Lewis rather than the players.

It’s easy to understand the fans’ frustration while condemning their manners. Falling behind a team with a defense like the Steelers’ by eight points essentially means you’re settling for the fact that you’re going to need two scoring possessions to overtake them. The fans seemed to have intuited what the Bengal coaches refused to accept: that if they couldn’t get a touchdown on fourth-and-one, they were going to be darned lucky to get more than one in the second half. They did get one, and only one, with 13 minutes left to play when Carson Palmer threw nine yards to T.J. Houshmandzadeh, a play that elicited groans from the commentators, who then forced themselves to try to pronounce T.J.’s last name correctly. The Bengals went on to lose, 24–13.

The real puzzle, though, is the Pittsburgh Steelers, who haven’t yet added up to the sum of their parts. Ben Roethlisberger, who seems fully recovered from his Mad Max phase, is headed for his third season (out of four) with eight yards or better per pass. With two TDs against Cincinnati, he has now thrown 15 scoring passes to just six interceptions. Running back Willie Parker, who gained 126 yards on 22 carries against Cincy, is right now moving the ball better than Jerome Bettis ever did. Before their inexplicable defensive lapse in giving up 31 points against Denver on October 21, the Steelers were leading the league in most key defensive categories. They still have the league’s lowest points-per-game average on defense.

Yet, after seven games, they are just 5–2 and in danger of getting left in the dust by the rampaging Colts and Patriots. When you’re in the same conference with two teams this good, your only realistic shot is to face them at home in the playoffs. In Week 14, the Steelers play the Patriots at New England — but that will be their only direct chance to do something about that home field situation. Either the Colts or Pats will have one loss after next Sunday, but it’s not likely that both are going to wind up with two or more losses. That means that the Steelers must play the rest of the season with a no margin-for-error attitude.

Mr. Barra is the author of “The Last Coach: A Life of Paul ‘Bear’ Bryant.”