It's been almost two years since Vontaze Burfict laid out Antonio Brown in a playoff game that left Brown concussed.

That hit was one of the reasons Burfict was suspended for the first three games of the 2016 season but the Bengals linebacker remains convinced that Brown wasn't really injured on the play. "He faked that," Burfict recently told ESPN The Magazine's Dotun Akintoye.

"I feel like [Brown] he looked at me," Burfict continued. "The ball tipped off his hands and he kind of put his head towards my area, and I tried to fade off of him at the last second, but he initially tried to make contact because he knew he could get the flag. And just the way he went down, it was just like -- I don't know man."

Burfict isn't the only Bengals defender who questioned Brown. Days after the hit, cornerback Adam Jones was convinced that Brown flopped. He told Brandon Marshall that Brown winked at him, adding, "Did you see him smile when he walked off the field? Go back and look at the film. ... I said, 'AB, you all right?' Now if you're knocked out, you think you're going to be able to wink and think about all that at the same time."

Jones later apologized when Brown was ruled out of the Steelers' next playoff game with a concussion. Weeks later, Brown remained critical of Burfict's hit.

"When you hit a guy after the play, a defenseless guy in the helmet," Brown said, "there are a lot of things that aren't right about that."

But during that offseason, Brown said he bumped into Burfict and the Bengals linebacker apologized.

"[He was] just saying he didn't have no intentions of trying to injure, that it was a football move," Brown told ESPN.com in December 2016.

All that good will again goes out the window because the Bengals host the Steelers on Monday night. For Pittsburgh, it's a chance to move to 10-2 and remain the No. 1 seed in the AFC. For Cincy, it could be the last best chance to make a playoff run. As it stands, the Bengals are currently 10th in the conference, behind three teams (the Chargers, Bills and Raiders) for the final playoff spot, currently occupied by the Bengals.

When the Bengals and Steelers met earlier this season, Burfict appeared to kick Steelers fullback Roosevelt Nix.

He wasn't flagged or fined but it certainly didn't go unnoticed in Pittsburgh's locker room.

"He's doing dirty s--- every week," Steelers linebacker Ryan Shazier said, via ESPN.com. "You're going to kick someone in the face? He's doing dirty s---. I'm not worried about him, man."