The Bengals get their first shot at trying to prove stability is better than change in the staid and  smashmouth AFC North, where a game always seems to have the whiff of a curled-up cigar. When the Bengals play the Steelers Sunday in Pittsburgh (1 p.m.-Cincinnati’s Local 12), they play their first chapter in the post-Mike Tomlin era.

After 19 years of Tomlin's defense using the foundational principles that were implemented in Pittsburgh during the 15 seasons before that under Bill Cowher, Patrick Graham takes over the defense for Mike McCarthy.

McCarthy, one of the North's three new head coaches, is the Steelers' first head coach from the offensive side since Bill Austin in the Humphrey-Nixon fall of 1968. In Baltimore, it's the first season without John Harbaugh since Joe Flacco was a rookie in 2008. After six seasons in Cleveland, Kevin Stefanski hatched an upset for the Falcons Thursday night in Green Bay.

Graham is respected, proven and 2-1 against three Bengals quarterbacks in coordinator stints with the Dolphins, Giants, and Raiders. Before hiring Al Golden last year, Bengals head coach Zac Taylor made sure he talked to Graham.

"You interview him because you are impressed with the scheme and the problems you face when you go against him," Taylor this week. "When you meet him, incredibly personable …  Thought highly of him before. Thought highly of him even more so afterwards."

Clearly Graham has a different style than Tomlin's come-and-get-us-here we-are-scheme. More disguises, more mysterious. If you want to get a better picture of one of the new faces in the rivalry, just look at how Bengals DJ Turner II and Dax Hill play on the Bengals' corner.

And to do that, you have to go back seven years and into a cramped Division II coach's office in Russellville, Ark.

Chuck Burks, Arkansas Tech's new 31-year-old defensive coordinator, walked over to his office on a Sunday morning wearing a navy blue suit expecting a call from a man he had never met.

No Zoom. Just a phone call.

"Noon," Burks recalls. "A sunny day. I remember that."

Patrick Graham, the new defensive coordinator for the Miami Dolphins, would be on the horn. Graham got his name from former NFL exec John Wooten, a mutual mentor. One of the first things Graham would ask Burks is why he'd leave a coordinator job for an entry-level slot in the league.

"I wore a red tie with the suit," says Burks for a mere phone call. "I wanted to be in game-day mode."

With a $60,000 Division II salary, the suit was off the rack but the conversation must have been off the charts. After an hour, Graham invited him to Miami for another interview, where the job would be his.

"Valentine's Day, 2019," Burks says.

Imagine, a first-time coordinator opting for a Division II guy.

"There's tons of coaches in the league that would never touch me," Burks says. "I don't have family in the league. I didn't play in the league. But these guys (Graham and head coach Brian Flores) saw coaching in me."

In a short time, Burks would go from that low-level assistant to coaching the cornerbacks. When the Miami staff changed after the 2021 season, Burks joined the AFC champion Bengals and as the only NFL corner coach they've ever had, has Turner and Hill playing at the top of the league.

That question about leaving a coordinator's job?

"I just told him that I just wanted to get better," Burks says. "I wanted to improve as a coach. I wanted to stretch myself and coach with the best of the best."

Ever since the Steelers chose Chuck Noll, a Paul Brown defender in Cleveland, to replace Austin, there always seem to be coaching ties intertwined in the franchises. When he was hired, Graham said he wasn't going to tinker much with the base 3-4 that former Bengals head coach Dick LeBeau brought the Steelers defense 35 years ago when Cowher was hired.

Graham's defensive line coach, Domata Peko, is a Bengals great, a nose tackle in the middle of six playoff defenses. Peko coaching for the Steelers conjures up memories of Bengals Ring of Honor member Ken Anderson coaching the Steelers quarterbacks 20 years ago.

(How times change. It will be recalled in the infamous Wild Card Game of 2015 in Paycor that Peko came roaring off the bench in his "Cloak of Invisibility," and didn't get a penalty for drilling a Steeler.)

If you want to know what Graham is going to do Sunday, it's not like Tomlin. But he won't let you know what he does, Burks says.

"He'll play what his personnel is," Burks says of Graham. "He doesn't believe (in systems). He believes in people. He's going to adapt to what his players do best.

"I can't tell you exactly what you're going to see, but I can assure you you're going to see something that's very specific for the Bengals.  Something completely different."

The big thing Burks took from Graham isn't coverage,  strategy or some kind of analytic alphabet. But how to make players fit. Check that. How to make people fit.

Turner and Hill are in Burks' room right now, yet he doesn't coach them the same way because they are different players with different strengths and weaknesses, a tactic he learned from Graham.

"Chuck is the best (corners) coach in the league," Turner says. "He teaches you the NFL game. He teaches you everything. Players. Plays. Splits. Coverages. He's made me understand the NFL game."

Burks: "You have to coach and tailor it to their strengths, right? What (Graham) instilled in me is just don't look at a corner. What does he do well and how can you put him in a position to do that? With PG, he challenged me to think more deeply about the game from the standpoint of personnel as opposed to plays."

It's like Bengals left tackle Orlando Brown Jr. says about Tomlin's gifted edge rushers in T.J. Watt and Alex Highsmith, as well as an always estimable defensive line anchored by 37-year-old Cam Heyward.

"They've adapted some of their old schemes … (Graham has) had some influence," Brown says. "Their personnel is similar. They're physical, and I think he's got such good personnel in his front seven, you see some similar stuff."

Graham gave a hint about why he likes the old LeBeau standby 3-4 even before the Steelers took the field in the spring.

"You guys all know this. There's going to be more five DBs out there than there's going be four DBs," Graham told the Pittsburgh media. "But once you start going into a 3-4 roster, you can start to think of the 4-2-5 nickel defense, more as 2-4-5, and it gives you flexibility. That's where you get all the fire zones and things that come up through that, but it's really about the flexibility of the roster, both schematically, defensively, special teams, and then more pass rushers."

But, like Burks says, the word is malleable. Brown thinks the blitzes are a bit different. And the analytics army says Graham is more prone to two-high safeties and various zones behind six- and seven-man pressures rather than Tomlin's fire zones ducking in and out of single-high and Cover 3.

One thing is for sure. Quarterback Joe Burrow knows he isn't going to see the same look and players when he gunned five touchdowns against Graham's Raiders two years ago.

"Their cover structure is different, what they like calling on first and second down and third down," Burrow said of the Steelers this week. "That all will be different from before. There's only so many different things that you can run. So there'll be some overlap, but certainly different."

Burks lived versatility and adjustments breaking in under Graham. After Graham taught him to put out the cones properly for drills ("He told me I was gone if I couldn't do it right"), he graduated to working on  coverages with All-Pro safety Minkah Fitzpatrick.

Then when the Dolphins claimed edge Taco Charlton off waivers from the Cowboys, Graham gave Burks a playbook, put them in a room, and told Burks to get him ready. A DB coach his entire life, the assignment stunned and then inspired Burks. Charlton had a sack that week against his buddies on Dallas.

"The whole time, I didn't see it, but he was just molding me," Burks says. "To add versatility to my game as a coach."

You'll see some of that versatility Sunday, but Burks doesn't know.

They talk often, like last week, catching up on family matters. They may have reminisced how Graham had him over for Thanksgiving, or when Graham bought him a couch when they were in Miami.

Burks got a little more than that 60 grand he got in Russellville, but not much more, and the dollar wasn't stretching as far, so he was watching TV on the floor until the couch came.

But this week?

"Not talking, of course," Burks says.

Welcome to Bengals-Steelers without Tomlin. But then again, with Peko and LeBeau and Graham and Burks, maybe it's not all that different.