The Cincinnati Bengals may have had their season ended by the Pittsburgh Steelers last Saturday. Finally being the team to allow them to break out offensively with a 34-point showing led by their third-string quarterback, Cincinnati slipped to 8-7 and now sits 10th in playoff seeding with games remaining against the Kansas City Chiefs and the Cleveland Browns, two teams with much left to play for.
It was probably a bit easier to stomach for LT Orlando Brown Jr., however, who received a nice consolation prize in the midst of the 23-point loss. You see, he got to FaceTime with his newborn son, whom he’d yet to meet, right after the game. His wife went into labor the night before, while he was already in Pittsburgh, two weeks before her due date.
“That’s one of those things, at the end of day, I’m thankful she understands, and my family understands”, he said about remaining in Pittsburgh to play on Saturday, via the team’s website. “For me, football is kind of everything right now. You don’t really get this opportunity back. You don’t get the opportunity to see a birth, either. For me, it was important to be there with the guys in Pittsburgh and to be out there with them”.
Had the Bengals won, they would be sitting at 9-6 right now and in the sixth seed ahead the 9-6 Buffalo Bills, whom they defeated in a head-to-head matchup earlier this year. Instead, they sit behind the 8-7 Steelers, now 10th in seeding, having lost to Pittsburgh twice in 2023. That means they would have to finish the year with a better record than the Steelers to pass them in seeding.
In other words, there was quite a lot at stake for Brown’s professional reality. The one game shifted their seeding by four spots and now has them on the outside looking in. It was a critical game that he felt he needed to play—only it very much did not go their way.
The biggest issue was ball security, backup QB Jake Browning firing a trio of interceptions. The Steelers were able to convert those turnovers into 17 points, a key difference for them compared to the rest of the season. But given that they scored more points in the first 16 minutes of the game than the Bengals managed in all 60, one could say it was never particularly close.
While his team’s future for the remainder of the 2023 season has taken a bleak turn, however, Brown’s life is good right now—very good. The seven-pound, 11-ounce Sonny now joins his older brother, Orlando Brown III, in their expanding young family.
According to the team’s website, it does sound as though Brown was able to see his son actually born, watching over the phone from the locker room after the game. And they got to meet face-to-face for the first time.
