Ben Roethlisberger joked that he has already tried to take another week off training after leading the unbeaten Pittsburgh Steelers to their ninth consecutive NFL victory on the back of limited preparation.

Roethlisberger was among four Steelers players activated from the reserve/COVID-19 list ahead of Sunday's clash against the Cincinnati Bengals and the Pittsburgh star fuelled the team's 36-10 victory.

Despite being kept away from the team's facility all week, Roethlisberger threw for a season-high 333 yards and four touchdowns, completing 27 of 46 passes as the Steelers improved to 9-0 for the season.

"Really just felt nice and rested coming into today," said the two-time Super Bowl-winning quarterback. "I tried to talk coach [Mike Tomlin] into seeing if I could take next week off, too."

"I threw about 50 balls on Friday, and that was it," Roethlisberger said. "I wanted to kind of let it rest. ... I iced it a lot."

Roethlisberger connected with Diontae Johnson and JuJu Smith-Schuster in the first half, before throwing TD passes to Chase Claypool twice in the second half.

"There was less anxiety, in terms of dealing with him in these circumstances, maybe than some of the other circumstances he and I have been in in the past, where his health was a factor in terms of availability," Steelers head coach Mike Tomlin said of Roethlisberger's performance.

"His health was not a factor, so we had very little reservations about his ability to perform once we got him to the stadium."

T.J. Watt sacked Bengals quarterback Joe Burrow twice – he had two sacks, four QB hits and two tackles for loss. T.J. Watt and J.J. Watt (2015) are the only players over the past 15 seasons to record nine-plus sacks, 25-plus quarterback hits and 10-plus tackles for loss in their team's first nine games of a season, per NFL Research.