At most, only three teams in the AFC North would have been able to win yesterday, since the Cleveland Browns and Baltimore Ravens played one another. Only two ended up winning however, with the Cincinnati Bengals unable to complete an improbable comeback against the Houston Texans.
Trailing by 10 with under four minutes to play, they put themselves in the position to take the lead with 1:42 to play. QB Joe Burrow tossed to an open WR Tyler Boyd on 3rd and goal from the 13 on what would have been a go-ahead touchdown—only he dropped it. They settled for a field goal instead of taking a four-point lead, and then lost on a game-winning kick as time expired.
As one would expect, Burrow did not toss his receiver under the bus for failing to make the play—very few players would, and of course, they shouldn’t. But it’s worth noting that Boyd had a 64-yard catch earlier in the drive that put them on the seven-yard line before Burrow took a sack for a seven-yard loss
“We wouldn’t have even been down there if it wasn’t for him”, he said, via transcript provided by the team’s media department. “Obviously, you’d like to come down with it, but we were able to go down there and tie it up. [We would have] liked to punch it in, make them go down and score a touchdown in that situation, but we were able to tie it up”.
All told, Boyd caught eight passes during the game for 117 yards, so he certainly put in his contributions. It was his first 100-yard game of the season, and in fact, he had more yards on that one long reception than he had in total in any one game. The veteran went into the divisional showdown with 36 receptions on the season for 300 yards and two touchdowns.
For his part, Burrow threw for 347 yards with two touchdowns, but he was also intercepted twice. The Bengals trailed 20-7 in the middle of the second quarter, and then, as mentioned earlier, trailed by 10, 27-17, with under four minutes to play. The Texans were still winning with under two minutes to go.
With their coming up just short, the Bengals now fall back down to 5-4 after having gone on a four-game winning streak to crawl back to relevance. They currently hold the fourth spot in the AFC North outright, with everyone else holding only three losses to date.
Coming up, they will visit the Ravens on Thursday night this week, so it will be a quick turnaround for both rivals who suffered tough losses on Sunday. Barring a tie, one will come away from this week feeling much better than they do now.
A Ravens win would set them up at 8-3, nearly at a winning record already with seven games left to play, and two games in advance of everybody else in the AFC North in the win column. A loss for the Bengals would send them crashing back down to .500 after winning the divisional title two years in a row. The stakes are just as high as on that third-down play with goal to go. And a loss Thursday would be even harder to move on from.
