Cyclone 10 GX transceiver RX word align pattern

Hello, I am using the Cyclone 10 GX transceiver, and wanted to try out synchronous state machine word alignment in simulation for now. I set the RX word aligner pattern to 0x17C, 10 bits.
I enabled 8b10b coding on both RX and TX. I am then sending 0xBCBC control characters. I would expect the RX to synchronize to the TX word, and
get pattern matches. But it never does, and I get no pattern matches.

I tried also putting in data between the control K28.5 characters. But that hasn't helped either.

I've also tried bitslip instead of synchronous state machine, and it worked just fine, I could send a few bitslips to sync to TX.

Am I doing something wrong? What could be the problem? I am attaching a screenshot with this behavior, I can send more if needed.