The Cincinnati Bengals looked a gift horse in the mouth and paid the price.
Lamar Jackson fumbled an overtime snap, giving the Bengals the ball at the 38-yard-line with a chance to close out a wild AFC North tussle. Cincy ran the ball three times, earning three yards and setting up a 53-yard attempt for Evan McPherson.
The football gods took unkindly to the lack of aggression. The snap came back wonky, Ryan Rehkow couldn’t get it down cleanly, and McPherson yanked it wide left. Two plays later, Justin Tucker was banging home a 24-yard chip shot field goal for a wild 41-38 Ravens comeback victory.
On a day in which Joe Burrow, Ja’Marr Chase and Tee Higgins tortured Baltimore through the air, the conservative approach at the end was jarring.
“Personally, I think we should have gone a little bit more aggressive in the first and second downs just to try to get Evan in better field goal range,” Higgins said after the contest. “You know he makes those from that deep. I’m not putting it on him at all, you know what I’m saying. So it’s a team effort, we lost as a team, but we could have did a better job at putting him in better field goal range to make it an easier kick.”
Added Chase: “I felt like we should have tried at least one play, to give it to one of our playmakers, me or Tee or Drei (Andrei Iosivas), try to get a first down, that’s what we’d been doing the whole game.”
Burrow put up 392 yards passing and his first career five-touchdown game with an interception on the day. Chase caught 10 passes for 193 yards and two TDs. Higgins gobbled up nine passes for 83 yards and two scores.
Bengals head coach Zac Taylor defended the conservative approach, noting the club was trying to avoid a sack or holding penalty that would have pushed Cincinnati out of field goal range. The coach added that there was one pass called, but Burrow checked to a run.
“When you’re in field goal range and you believe in your kicker, it really is as simple as that,” Taylor said.
Believing in McPherson is one thing. Doing everything you can to put him into the best possible situation to succeed is another.
As the Bengals’ flub showed, long field goals — even as they become more automatic — come with added risk. If Cincy was 20 yards closer, the missed snap and hold might not have mattered. Setting up a long-range field goal in crunch time is playing with fire.
The Bengals got burned Sunday, falling to 1-4.
“We’re not a championship-level team right now,” Burrow said. “We’re not. I like to think that we’ll come back and improve throughout the season to get to that point, but right now, we are not, and we have to get better.”
Sunday showed they can stick with an AFC contender. But Taylor’s team has a giant early season hole to dig out of now. Since 1990, only 11 of 167 teams to start 1-4 have made the postseason.
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