Bengals Keep Passing Tests, Even Without Joe Burrow

The Bengals didn’t have a ton of reason for hope last month after Joe Burrow went down for the year. Even more doubt should’ve crept in when D.J. Reader and Ja’Marr Chase got hurt Saturday afternoon. But sometimes a coach has a feeling about these things. And at this point, Zac Taylor has built a pretty deep reservoir of good vibes to draw on.

So it was that as the Vikings lined up for a fourth-and-1 at the Cincinnati 42-yard line Saturday, Taylor thought back to a time—Week 1 of 2021—when there were fewer reasons to believe.

“I don’t know if you care about this or not, but we beat Minnesota in overtime, Week 1 of that Super Bowl year,” Taylor said, on his ride home Saturday night. “In overtime, we created a turnover on the same spot and hit a big play to C.J. Uzomah, and then Evan McPherson kicked his first-ever game-winning field goal. The defense got another turnover, turnover on downs, same spot, same direction. Then we hit a big play to TB [Tyler Boyd], and Evan McPherson hits another walk-off field goal. It felt very familiar to me, playing them.”

I looked it up, and, sure enough, Taylor was … pretty close. In 2021, the Vikings were at the Bengals’ 38, and in that case it was Jessie Bates III and Germaine Pratt converging on Dalvin Cook, and forcing a fumble, which Pratt would collect to set the stage for Burrow’s 32-yard strike to Uzomah and McPherson’s 33-yard game-winner.

This week, the defense bowed up, burying Nick Mullens’s fourth-down push-play attempt at the line, which set up the 44-yard catch-and-run from Jake Browning to Boyd on third-and-9, and subsequently a 29-yard chip shot from McPherson for the win.

Coincidence? Yes. But in both circumstances, the Bengals had something to prove. In 2021, it was that they belonged. This time around, it’s been that they could survive.

In each case, Taylor’s team passed a test.

The first one showed that the Bengals might not be the same old Bengals anymore. This one simply revealed the strength of the foundation that was laid then, in that the team won’t revert even with its biggest stars hurt. And where the old Bengals may have waited for bad things to happen, this one expects great things to come. On Saturday, that meant battling back from a 17–3 deficit, then converting in all the big spots, fourth down included.

“There’s no panic whatsoever,” Taylor says about his team. “It’s just, Who’s going to make the next play to get us in it? We’ve been down, what, 21–3 to Kansas City a couple times? We’ve been in these situations before. It’s just kind of ingrained in us that we’ll find a way out of it. That’s what guys did. I remember being down 17–3 at the end of the third and thinking, We’re still calling this game normal. Our defense is going to get a stop as long as we get points, and we’ll find a way to get in it. That’s what our guys did.”

Calling it normal first meant putting together a methodical, eight-play, 75-yard drive that took nearly five minutes off the clock, and ended with Browning throwing a dime to Tee Higgins on a corner route for a 13-yard touchdown on the first snap of the fourth quarter.

From there, the extraordinary ensued. As Taylor said, the Bengals kept finding a way.

• On the team’s next possession, Browning’s trust in his receivers paid off again—in a much more difficult spot. Facing third-and-21 with 11:19 left, Browning stood in, his protection held up perfectly, and he sent a rope down Main Street to Chase for 24 yards.

“Here’s what’s impressive about it: Jake threw a pick on that play on Wednesday,” Taylor says. “I told myself, I’m not going to call that. Not after he threw a pick. We don’t need it. Dan Pitcher, our quarterback coach, goes through it with the quarterbacks, still liked the play. He suggested it in that moment. That’s a tough spot. That’s the only thing that might get you the first down, that kind of a dagger route, that’s what that was.

“Jake just, again, stepping up and making a huge play. The line did a great job. That was impressive. And you’ve always got confidence when the ball’s in the air to Ja’Marr.”

The flip side was Chase went down with an AC joint sprain on the play, which, it turned out, only created an opportunity for someone else. Joe Mixon made good by grinding out a score on fourth-and-goal from the 1 to tie the game. Then, on the following series, Pratt notched a pick-six to give the Bengals the lead—only to see an offside call nullify the score, and the Vikings drive to take the lead back.

• After that came Higgins’s incredible Gumby act—where Jake Browning escaped, threw the ball falling away at the pylon, and Higgins came back to it, leaped over Akayleb Evans for it, snatched it, kept his toes inbounds, then reached it back over the goal line with his right arm fully extended to even the score again, this time at 24.

“Jake, he trusts these guys,” said Taylor, who hadn’t yet seen it when we talked. “We had a similar situation earlier. It was Cover Zero, and he threw it out of bounds instead of giving Tee a shot. On this one, he gave Tee a shot. That was huge. Tee, over his last four years, has made so many of those one-on-one jump ball catches. Was it a jump ball?”

Taylor laughed, “I’ll take it.”

And after being down 17–3, he’d certainly take a fifth quarter.

• In overtime, the Bengals got that fourth-and-1 stop without Reader, which was just one sign of the team’s character that came in the extra frame. Another was how Boyd kept working to get open on the third down when Browning broke the pocket and sent his receivers into a scramble drill.

“How many catches did TB have today? One, two? Not many,” Taylor said (Boyd had one for eight yards before the big one.) “That’s TB. He caught one on a checkdown. He maybe had two or three. He just is always involved, always dependable, always ready to be in position on a scramble drill, which we preach endlessly. For him to come up and make that play for him to win us the game is awesome. So proud of TB to be able to do that for us.”

Even bigger at that point, that he and Higgins came up like they did with Chase out. Just as Browning had in Burrow’s spot. And the defense did on fourth-and-short, sans Reader.

***

No one’s picking these Bengals to win the Super Bowl, like so many (present company included) were a couple of months ago. And the reason why is, of course, all that attrition that’s left Cincinnati shorthanded in areas (quarterback, receiver, defensive line) that have defined the team over the past few years.

For now, Taylor’s crew isn’t worried about that.

For now, for them, it’s about seeing how far they can take things.

Burrow and Reader won’t be coming back this year, and Chase’s status is still up in the air. But that doesn’t mean those guys aren’t still a part of what’s happening—because the standard they helped to set with this once sad-sack franchise is a big part of why the other guys never gave up on the season, even if so many others were doing that for them. And that’s why, for Taylor, just getting to come to work with them every day is a pretty nice benefit of all this.

“Oh yeah,” he says. “There are no discipline issues you’re dealing with. Everybody’s about the right stuff. Everyone’s taking care of their business. Guys are consistent. Every day when they walk in the building, we get the same guys. You’re not waiting to see who’s in a good mood, who’s in a bad mood. Everyone’s consistent. These guys genuinely love spending time with each other. That’s a coach’s dream—everybody’s all in.

“Now, we have to count on other guys to stand up, and it’s guys that have been in this program for a while. I’m just excited to see how this team continues to respond next week.”

Truth is, he already has a pretty good idea of how they will.