The Cincinnati Bengals are going to the Tremendous Bowl.
Repeat: The Cincinnati Bengals are going to the Tremendous Bowl.
Yet one more time, so it really units in: The Cincinnati Bengals, two years after sinking to the league’s basement, are 60 minutes away from successful all of it.
It was becoming that on the weekend through which Tom Brady’s retirement was teased, Joe Burrow shone. Brady was the religious inheritor to his hero Joe Montana. In Burrow, the league has a quarterback who neatly completes the circle; one other participant with a backstory that may be rejected as corny had been it fiction. One other prompt franchise changer. One other participant who raises his sport within the largest moments. In Burrow, the NFL has discovered its new Joe Cool.
Repeatedly, regardless of how iffy the play-call, regardless of how poor the safety, regardless of what number of assets a protection allocates to the Bengals’ No 1 receiver Ja’Marr Chase, Burrow finds a means. He slips and slides. He bobs and weaves. Burrow shouldn't be a supreme athlete however he does simply sufficient to maintain the chains transferring, to keep away from strain, to increase performs and drives, to offer his group an opportunity to attain factors when the opposite components of the offense do click on. He's the last word downside solver.
JOE BURROW IS RIDICULOUS ‼️
— SportsCenter (@SportsCenter) January 30, 2022
(by way of @NFL)pic.twitter.com/vjvemXy8Xc
Unflappable. Unwavering. Name it what you need. Because the depth rises, Burrow finds a strategy to produce. Solely two quarterbacks have led groups to school soccer’s FBS Nationwide Championship and a Tremendous Bowl title: Montana and Joe Namath. In two weeks, Burrow can change into the third.
Sunday’s sport shall be principally remembered for Burrow’s excellence. However this was as a lot a Chiefs loss as a Bengals win. All through the primary half, the Chiefs had been at their unstoppable greatest on offense. The run-game was rolling. Mahomes was dancing. Every part was clicking. On protection, they contained Burrow, Chase and Joe Mixon, chopping the availability line from the quarterback to his most harmful receiver and swamping the Bengals’ run-game with our bodies on the line of scrimmage.
After which it flipped. A dodgy name from the Chiefs’ teaching workers to finish the half noticed the Chiefs go for a landing when a subject purpose would have pushed their half-time lead from 11 to 14 factors. Within the second half, they flat-lined. There was a complacence to their play: “Pffft, we’ll determine it out.”
The sport took an identical sample to the Week 17 matchup, which the Bengals gained. The Bengals adjusted on protection, backing all people up, baiting the Chiefs to proceed to run the ball, and forcing Mahomes to make the identical alternative again and again: Ought to I push the ball downfield into hazard or play it protected and move quick?
Mahomes selected the latter – or was caught in two minds – and the offense slowed down. His timing was shaken. The Bengals pass-rush began to generate a smidge of strain in essential spots. However for a lot of the half, they ditched the notion of strain altogether, liberating up Mahomes to indulge his personal worst instincts. He held onto the ball… and held onto the ball… and held on some extra. The Chiefs’ offense devolved right into a freelancing mess. The same old crispness was gone. Over the course of the second half, Mahomes accomplished simply 9 of 19 passes for 55 yards, throwing no touchdowns.
Then, catastrophe for the Chiefs: Turnovers. For all of the Chiefs’ explosiveness on offense, the key to their success is that they don't hand the opposition probabilities. Mahomes had thrown only a single interception in his total playoff profession heading into Sunday. Towards the Bengals, he tossed two within the second half: One to swing the sport, establishing Burrow and the Cincy offense in scoring vary; one in extra time to offer the Bengals a shot to stroll off.
It was the worst half of Mahomes’ younger profession. He was tentative within the pocket, taking too lengthy to make choices – and transferring into strain, the place there have been escape hatches elsewhere.
Burrow and the Bengals took benefit. It was Burrow’s skill to maneuver and prolong performs that proved the distinction when the 2 sides met a month in the past, and it was the identical on Sunday. He picked up 4 first downs on 4 dashing makes an attempt, scrambling away from strain to increase drives. Burrow was slowed down by his personal group’s dodgy play-calling, however when his quantity was known as on third and lengthy, he delivered every time.
Ja'Marr Chase and Joe Burrow's fathers celebrated the AFC Championship by smoking cigars 😂🤝 pic.twitter.com/I3C9bq1NgV
— SportsCenter (@SportsCenter) January 31, 2022
Burrow’s legend – the coats, the stroll, the cigars, the championships – was born in Ohio and burgeoned throughout his extraordinary school profession in Louisiana. In 2019, the Bengals bottomed out, handing them the primary total choose and an opportunity to deliver Burrow house when he was drafted in April 2020. He joined the worst group within the league, and reworked the franchise – its file, its aura, all of it – in 21 quick months.
“I’m uninterested in the underdog narrative. We’ve obtained good gamers, good coaches,” Burrow stated earlier than the sport. The Bengals, and Burrow, are underdogs no extra.
Stat of the week
The Rams overcame the biggest deficit within the fourth quarter of a championship sport (10 factors) to beat the Niners, 20-17.
It was a wierd sport in LA, one through which the play clock usually felt extra like a suggestion than a legislation, and with two teaching staffs seemingly hellbent on undermining their very own efforts with sloppy game-management. Two of the league’s prime offensive minds regarded frazzled within the fourth quarter. Sean McVay burned all of his timeouts and challenges with 10 minutes to play. Kyle Shanahan’s offense was a pumpkin when his group wanted it most. The Niners’ possessed the ball thrice after taking that 10-point lead within the fourth quarter. The outcome: 12 performs, 26 yards, simply 4 minutes rolling off the clock. Brutal. It wasn’t fairly 28-3 or the Niners’ collapse in opposition to the Chiefs in Tremendous Bowl LIV, however it exists in the identical orbit – a part of the mounting proof that when issues get tight late within the sport, so does the Niners’ head coach.
The Rams assortment of stars will now transfer on to the Tremendous Bowl, proof constructive that the group’s coverage to go all-in on this season, transport out a stack of future belongings to accumulate Jalen Ramsey, Matthew Stafford, and Von Miller over the previous two seasons, was finally value it – even when they wanted a serving to hand (or two) on the finish.
In San Francisco, they are going to be left to marvel what may need been had Shanahan higher navigated the late-game scenario or had Jaquiski Tartt caught a routine pop-up fly.
MVP of the week
Cooper Kupp, broad receiver, LA Rams. Who else? No quantity of wonky clock administration or puzzling sport administration calls from Sean McVay may cease Kupp from doing what he does greatest: getting open deep behind a protection. Kupp introduced some sizzle to an in any other case stilted Rams offense late within the sport. He completed with 11 catches for 142 yards and two touchdowns, together with the landing seize that sparked the Rams’ comeback and an important catch and run that arrange what proved to be the game-winning subject purpose.
Video of the week
typically you simply gotta love a great debacle of a dwell shot pic.twitter.com/Vx33uq0QF5
— good entertaining baseball content material (@clintonyates) January 30, 2022
A pleasant second of half-time comedy in Kansas Metropolis. CBS pays billions of dollars to the NFL for broadcast rights. On condition that NBC has the rotation for the Tremendous Bowl this yr, the AFC Championship represented CBS’s Recreation of the Yr. And in that large spot: The community’s halftime present was drowned out by a live performance blaring out in Arrowhead.
It felt like a small win for TV viewers. For too lengthy networks have shoved TV units on the sphere for … what motive? Does any fan ever say “Oh, look, they’re actually on the sport!” Does it add something to the published aside from, maybe, some postgame exercise – one thing that might be replicated by, I don’t know, leaving a studio and strolling all the way down to the sphere on the sport’s conclusion. On-field evaluation in a raucous stadium setting provides nothing for viewers. It’s time to ditch the observe.
Quote of the week
“This story is whole conjecture. Tommy has not made a closing choice by some means and anyone else that claims that he has is completely improper” – Tom Brady Sr on his son’s potential retirement.
Tom Brady’s future has formally change into a will-he-won’t-he saga. ESPN reported on Saturday that Brady’s twenty second season shall be his final. Present and former teammates congratulated the sport’s unanimous GOAT. His personal firm wished him one of the best sooner or later. However Brady has but to tell the Buccaneers, in response to studies. His father advised reporters that the quarterback is but to decide.
Both Brady is enjoying a type of 4D chess, seeking to actual some type of press-based revenge on ESPN for the corporate’s reporting throughout Deflategate, or, Brady, ever the content material creator, is eager to manage his retirement narrative himself. Most certainly, Brady will announce his retirement after the Tremendous Bowl and can file the official paperwork as soon as the brand new league season kicks in and he has acquired the ultimate portion of his signing bonus with the Bucs.
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