One Bengals Player Would Have Been the Difference Between a Win and the Loss Sunday Against the Patriots
CINCINNATI – Do the Cincinnati Bengals beat the New England Patriots if Joe Burrow – and not Joe Flacco – plays quarterback Sunday at Paycor Stadium?
That’s hard to say.
You can’t just assume it would be peak Burrow coming in without a hint of rust and slinging the ball around the field after 10 weeks on the sideline.
Maybe the Bengals win. Or maybe it looks similar to what took place, with the New England Patriots prevailing 26-20.
Do the Bengals win if Ja’Marr Chase plays against the Patriots.
That one is damn near a definitive ‘yes.’
Unfortunately, Chase not only cost himself more $520,000 by spitting on Jalen Ramsey last week in Pittsburgh, but he also cost his team a win due to his one-game suspension.
And that cost the Bengals a chance to be two games out of first place in the AFC North with a Thursday date against the first-place Ravens Burrow coinciding with the return of Burrow to author the sort of run that made last year’s stretch run so memorable.
The Bengals got so many of the things that have been lacking in their lost season, including real, bonafide improvement from the beleaguered defense.
There were a couple of goal-line stands, an interception return for a touchdown and even solid tackling.
Yes, the defense wasn’t great, but there aren’t a lot of light switch moments in the NFL. The jump from awful to solid takes time, and Sunday was a significant – not superfluous – step in the right direction.
“We were showing what our real identity is,” said safety Geno Stone, who had a 34-yard interception return touchdown and career-high 13 tackles.
“It took a while – it took a lot – but we’re finding guys in the right spots, and we’re all just playing with heart right now. We’re owning up to all the mistakes we had early in the season.”
The unit gave up just 19 points to the hottest team in the NFL.
It was a Flacco pick six that ultimately ended up being the difference.
Chase Brown and the Bengals run game flashed again, even without the threat of Ja’Marr Chase taking attention away from it. Brown rushed for 107 yards with an average of 5.6 per attempt.
Evan McPherson kicked a franchise-record 63-yard field goal.
It was the kind of complementary football the team has been desperate for all year.
But because Ja’Marr Chase could keep his cool, the Bengals lost for the fourth game in a row and eight time in the last nine.
The Cincinnati defensive players never lost their cool, even as they put up historically wretched numbers and endured the criticism and taunts nationally and locally, including from their own fan base.
They answered tough questions without getting snippy or short.
They did everything right to prepare, even if they didn’t always rise to the occasion with their execution.
“They fought like crazy in a lot of different ways,” head coach Zac Taylor said. “Kept fighting them in the goal-line stands, representing who these guys are right now.
“I thought those guys fought for us, got us a turnover, a pick six. Just keep believing in those guys. They’re going to be fighting for us and finding a way.”
So many of the losses in this lost season are on that group.
But they played well enough to win Sunday.
Had Chase been running routes for Flacco, the game, and the ensuing conversations, would have been different.
The defense gave up 20 points last week at Pittsburgh and 19 today against New England.
That should be good enough to win most Sundays.
But they Bengals haven’t been able to balance each other, which is why their record is so out of whack.
Chase will get a shot at redemption Thursday night, presumably with Burrow throwing him the ball.
But it won’t seem to mean as much as it could have had Chase been on the field today.
The Bengals aren’t mathematically eliminated, but they’re close.
No team in NFL history has ever made the playoffs after starting 3-8.
If Burrow comes back and runs the table to get them to 9-8, could it be enough?
Or will it have the Bengals looking back on one specific loss to the Patriots as the reason they fell short, as was the case in 2024, just for different reasons.
Despite the Outcome, Kafka’s Fourth-Down Gamble Was The Right Call
The New York Giants were faced with a fourth-and-goal from the Detroit six-yard line, nursing a 27-24 lead with roughly three minutes left in the game. Mike Kafka was faced with his first big late-game decision as head coach: should the Giants go for a touchdown and ice the game, or take the points and hope to hold the Lions out of the end zone?
Although New York failed to convert on fourth down and lost the game in overtime, going for it was undeniably the right call. In fact, the Giants did not have much of a choice with the defense repeatedly blowing double-digit leads this season, including multiple times in the fourth quarter.
Giants’ Defense Cannot Be Trusted to Make A Late Stop
Mike Kafka did not waver from his decision to go for it on fourth down, as he doubled down on it in his media availability postgame. Kafka said to reporters, “Our decision was a correct one. I stand by it. We took points to go up 10 points.”
While a strong defense may have been up to the task of holding the Lions out of the end zone, this Giants defense has proven to be anything but. A Malik Nabers touchdown catch from Russell Wilson with 25 seconds left in Dallas was too long to prevent the Cowboys from tying the game with a field goal.
A Jaxson Dart rushing touchdown with 37 seconds left in Denver was not enough for the defense to hang on to get a win, with the Giants allowing an unthinkable 33 points in the fourth quarter to the Broncos after leading 19-0 through three quarters.
A ten-point fourth-quarter lead in Chicago was not safe, as the Bears scored two touchdowns in roughly two minutes to take the lead. Again and again, Shane Bowen’s soft zone coverages allow the opposing team to pick up chunk yardage through the air and even on the ground, making the talented Giants defense look silly.
Even though the Giants forced a 59-yard field goal from Jake Bates (which is a reasonable attempt at a stop anyway), there was no way that Kafka or any Giants fan could have known that they would do that after the horrific fourth-quarter defense the team has played this year.
In addition, the Lions could have attacked the situation differently if they knew they had four downs to work with instead of three, potentially making the entire point moot.
Brian Daboll decided to kick a field goal to go up ten against the Bears, and the safe play ended up backfiring because of how bad the Giants’ defense was. Chicago won 24-20, meaning the Giants would have needed to score the touchdown in that spot just to take the game to overtime.
Analytics Favored Giants Going For The Touchdown
If the human element does not convince you, perhaps the analytics will. A model from NFL analyst Seth Walder showed that scoring a touchdown would have given New York an 86.5% chance of winning, while converting the field goal would have given the Giants a 79.4% chance of winning. That favors going for the touchdown over the field goal attempt by 7.1%.
Even a model from the NFL 4th Down Bot account on Bluesky that disagreed indicated that kicking a field goal would have been nothing but a safe play. Whether the Giants scored the field goal or touchdown or missed on either attempt, the math favors New York going for the touchdown in all four scenarios.
If Koo missed the short field goal, New York would still have a 52% chance of winning the game, according to the model. If he were to make it, that percentage goes up to just 74%. The Giants’ failure to score a touchdown left them with a 57% chance to win the game because of the improved field position relative to a touchback, while if they had found the end zone, they would have been a near-lock to win at 93%.
The only metric that favored kicking a field goal was the likelihood of the field goal versus the touchdown, with the chip-shot field goal being given a 99% chance of being made and the touchdown being given a 27% chance of being converted. But when looking at actually winning the football game, the numbers favor the more aggressive decision in every case.
The Giants may have lost the game, with Jake Bates connecting from 59 yards out and Jahmyr Gibbs scoring the opening touchdown in overtime, before New York failed to answer back on their ensuing drive. But when you look at the analytics, or more importantly, the unreliability of the Giants’ defense to get a late-game stop, the decision could not have been more correct.
