Conference Championship Recap: AFC.
SWEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEET VICTOOOOOORY!
"You can't even write stories like this," Hubbard said. "It's amazing."
What if The NFL’s Best Cinematic, Hollywood Ending Didn’t Take Place In California. But Now The Cinderella Story of Sort Heads West To Write Its Ending In The Stars...
The Bengals Are Unto The Superbowl For The First Time In 34 Year. Frist Overcoming, Then Outlasting The Chiefs In Kansas City 27-24 In Overtime.
Overcoming Has Been The Lining for These Bengals Who Are, 1) Young and 2) Resilient 3) Inexorable. Through A Season Where Most Picked Them To Finish Last. The Organizations AHd Their Draft Picked And Criticized, Especially When Chase Struggled In The Preseason. Of Course, This Darft Would Come To Pay Major Dividends Now That The Bengals Are One Away From The Greatest Ending To Any Story Book Season In Recent Memory.
After Winning Two Games In Total two Years Ago. Losing Their Future Of The franchise Quarterback Joe Burrow Two A Deflating Knee Injury. The Bengals Organization and Zach Taylor Engineered One Of The Greatest Turnaround If Not the Greatest Turnaround in Recent Memory. From 2 To 10, The Division And The Conference All In One Season. Reminiscent Of Andrew Luck A The Colts A Decade Ago. But The Bengals Took Things Further. Where Those Colt Had Lost A Superbowl Three Years Earlier and Peyton Manning To A Worrying Neck injury, These Bengals Were Fight Grander History. One Of Curses A Missed Opportunities.
The Journey Form Debts Goes Back To Those ’88 Bengals Lead By Hall of Fame Quarterback Boomer Esiason. Esiason Works As A Broadcaster For CBS, The Unexpected Turn of Events, A Bengals, Boomer Couldn’t shroud his Elations With His Former.
Amid His Other Commentator Cohort Gregarious Delve Into Th Game, Boomer Sat Quiet. Off To The Right And Smirked. Waiting To head Back Stage And Meet The Latest Iteration Of Bengals Success.
Back In 1988, Those Bengals Were coming off A 4 Win Season Themsleves. The Team Played in the Super bowl Earlier That Decade, But Roster Roller over, Notably At quarterback, Meant The Team Needs To Become a New Team. The Group, Turned The Team Around. The Bengals were the No. 1 seed in the AFC In ‘88. Best the league in points And Total Yeard. Aside From Esiason, Who Arrived in 84, Hall of Famer Tackle Anthony Munoz Grounding Opponents Defensive Lines To Dust. Icky Woods, And His Famed Shuffle, Lead The NFL to Number rushing Team yards And Touchdown. Woods Had 15 Touchdowns That Season And A lot of Shuffling To Do. QB Boomer Esiason, the league MVP, all Pro, And Second In Offensive Player Of The Year. Esiason threw for 3,573 yards and 28 touchdowns. One Of The Last Fame Souths Paws In The League, Boomer’s Confident Got The Bengal Over The AFC Favorite Bills But couldn’t Quite Push Head Coach and Offensive Guru Sam Wyche Offense Through To A Superbowl Win, Losing By Four. It Remains one of The Only Worst To Superbowl’s And One of The Greater Turn Arounds In Recent Memory. Until
Where Most Cinderella Man stories In The NFL Have Ended In A Reviling celebrational Divisional Or Conference Round Match, the Bengals Aren’t Content With Just Being Here. “Teams Going To Have To Contend With Us.” Joe Burrow Beam.
Rap star Nas Once Said :
“Made the ghost leave a body, now they hauntin' the block
Where they used to stand at, somebody's takin' the place
A younger man perhaps,”
It's Ethereal, otherworldly.
As We Await The Scarring Report of Tom Brady’s Retirement. We Witness The Rise Of Joe Burrow Walking Over Brady’s Former Turf. In A Profound Fashion.
Ready For One More Game.
Before They Could Complete The Season’s Comeback, They Had To Complete Another In game Comeback.
All Year The Bengals Have Won In The Margins. Week One, Against The Vikings, The Eck Out A Late Field Goal By Rookie fifth Rounder Evan McPherson, A Bit of Foreshadowing. Five Of The Bengals 10 regular Seasons Win Have Come Down to One Score, Four By A Field Goal. Yes, That’s Including The Critical Week 17 Against the Chiefs. They’ve Been A Second Half, Microwave Type Team. But Against Patrick Mahomes In Playing Catch Could Mean Needing Extra Time.
Cincinnati trailed 21-3 at one point in the second quarter. The Chiefs passing Offense Riddled The Bengals Secondary. To The Tune Of Three Straight Touchdowns, The First Three Possession. The Last One A, Three Yard Endzone Strike From Mahoes To Necole Hardman With 5 Minutes To Go, To The Half. In Between, The Chiefs Exerting Their Will.
The Bengals, Punt, Field Goal, Punt. With Another Of Possession Of Potential Shortcoming In Line. To That Point, Burrow had Been 6 of 12 With 5 Straight Incompletions. Before the Bengals Began t turn A corner. The Chiefs Third Touchdown Present courtesy The Result of Patrick Mahomes Prowess In The Shot Gun. The Bengals Work The running Game In Conjunction With The Shotgun ( Three Shot Guns, Three Runs) If to At least End The Half With The Last Possession and Score Or At least Keep Mahomes From Running Up The Score Before The Half.
I Wrote On this Before. For Some teams, A win Doesn’t Feel Real If The Don’t Survive The Darkness To Reach It. For The Bengals, Who Weren’t Supposed to be Here A Remain Under The Weight The Expectation Futility. Spending Half Consider How Best To Chip Away This Lead, In A Game Of Nothing To Lose.
The Bengals Orchestrated A Seven Play Drive The Began On Burrows Arm. Burrow Takes A quick Dumb off To Samaje Perrine, Who Turns Up Field And Runs The Ball For 41 Yards.
The Tide of The Game Didn’t Shift; It Slowed Some.
Of The Half, The Chiefs Struggled To Regain It Former Offensive Form.
When The Chiefs Scored With Five Minutes To Go In The Half, The Offense Looked Unconscious. Not Unconscious, Like Sleepwalking, But Unconscious On A Higher Level. Mahomes Connected With Tyreek, Kelce, And Then Hardman. The Running Game, With Jerod McKinnon Picked Up Work Along The Way. The Chiefs Offense Had All The Workings Of A Man Posses. On A Mission To Prove Itself The Unchallenged Best in The AFC. The Only Trouble, The Offense Developed An Ailment, A Could Of Intractable Tumor. The Diseases of More.
On The Final Possession Before The Half, In Field Goal Range. A Chip Shot for Harrison Butker, The Chiefs, With Four Seconds Went For A Touchdown And Were Stop Short, After The Bengals Gifted The Chiefs A Plot Near the Endzone on A Pass interference Called. It Seemed That the Bengals Couldn’t Escape This Half With Any Momentum, Much Less A Reasonable Deficit. But That had been That—the Stop Meant, An impasse At Least. The Second Half Would Be Nobody’s Game.
Coming out Of The Half 21-10. The Result Of Week 17’s Breakdown Would Have Echoed In The Minds of Chiefs Players. It Had to be Because They Would Have Studied The Film All Week In The lead Up To This Matchup.
That Echo. The Occupying One. It Emits And Reverbs From With And Around The Caverns Of The Mind of All Industrious And Inspiring individuals. Kobe, Famed For his Obsessive Qualifies, Stayed Late After Games And Work Tirelessly In Warm-Ups Because The Sting Of Certain Losses Never Dissipated.
“Successful quarterbacks are famously monomaniacal… to find a successful modern quarterback who hasn’t tried to find some way to cram 25 hours into a day or seek a radical edge in the name of improvement. “
Mahomes Came Out of The Locker Room firing. Mahomes Shotgun. Shotgun. Shotgun.
The Chief Get A touchdown Out of this Drive. Instead, this one Ended in A Punt for The First time; the Bengals Forced Mahomes Off The Scoreboard.
But The Bengals Offense Could Make Good of It, And In four Plays, The Chiefs were Back Out. Mahomes’ Arm Ready To Toss Darts.
But With Every Shot Or Throw. Every Possession. Every Opportunity To Bury The Past. The Echo Gets Louder The Cavern Becomes an Abyss With Every Miss Fire Gets Deep.
A Field Goal Interrupted A Series Of punt Between The Two Teams. Down Eight, the echo Started Feel Like A Thud.
Then,
Patrick Mahomes Throw Two picks in This AFC Championship. How Many Had He Thrown In His Three Previous Championship Games Before Facing The Bengals? Zero. An Even Greater Comparison. Mahomes Had Thrown Only two Interceptions, In Total Since Week 14. The Best TD: Int Ratio, 20 Touchdowns, two interceptions In That Span.
Mahomes Had Nine Touchdown To Zero Interceptions And Zero Inception In conference championship Games.
He’d Never Played A Road Game in The AFC Playoffs and Only One Int In Arrowhead In the Playoffs Against The Steelers.
The Chiefs Structure The offense Against The Bills In The Divisional To be Less Combustible. Mahomes Never Threw A Pass Beyond Twenty Yards, But Andy Reid Pulled Out The Keys To The Porsche To Put the Bengals Away.
Of The Two Interceptions Against The Bengals Which Proved Most Costly. The First Had Bee is The second interception Mahomes has ever thrown at a home in the playoffs; He’s Only Played At Home Or In The Superbowl In the Playoffs. The First Against The Bengals’ Interception, In The Third, A Gargantuan One. The Dreaded Big Man Pick.
From Snap To End. This Shot Gun Call Had All the Makings of A Play Dragged Clean Out of The First Half of The season For The Chiefs. Turnovers Were A Dreaded Consequence For The Chiefs Looking To Exploit Their Speed On Offense. Most of The Costlier One Came Deep. This One Mange 2 Air Yards At best And Hit A Flat Note On The Chiefs Offense. So Un-Mahomes-Like, It's Difficult To Put In Words.
He was sputtering his feet To His Left. Mahomes Double cocks Short Pass That Tipped Landed And Got Pulled In By Cincy D-Lineman. The Chiefs Were Up Eight. But Momentum Hung In The Balance.
The Chase And Burrow Symbiotic Union Earned Near All The Acclaim For This Bengals Team Continuing It All Heralded Unlikely Story.
Can Chase Be Stop? How Does Chase Do It? Chase And Burrow, Are they Next to Peyton and Marvin? Aaron Rodgers And Davante Adams? In Winning Time, With The Passing offense Short One Arm. Burrow Look The Odd man Out, Tee Higgin’s Way To Move The Chains, and Ice The Game.
According to ESPN Stats & Information, Mahomes has never lost when taking a lead of 15 or more points (37-0 including playoffs). The Same Had been True when the Chiefs Lost To This Bengals Team In Week 17
The Truth To Defending The Tyreek Hill And Patrick Mahomes, That Chase-Burrow Counterpart; Take Away The Angles. In A Way, The First Two Passes Mirror Each Other. Mahomes Rolled out And Caught Tyreek Running Away from Two Defenders in The Deep Right corner Of The Endzone Touchdown. That Play Set In Motion The Ridiculousness of Mahomes According To Profootballfocus, The Former Superbowl MVP Finish The First Half with A completion rate of 100% and a passer rating of 149.9, generating 10.5 yards per attempt. Mahomes Ended The First Quarter With A Touchdown Drive, 7/7, And A pass deep left to Mecole Hardman for 44 yards For The Final Play of The Quarter. His Incompletion would Come One Pass Later.
In Their, The Seeds of Doom Began to Bloom.
Mahomes Avarice Grew.
Far Beyond The Aggressive Demeanor, He Explored In The First Quarter. By The End Of The Half, His Lust for Yards Became insatiable.
Take The Final Play of The Half. The One That’s Earn Mahomes His Judgement.
“ I was Supposed To Throw The Ball Away.., I got A Little Greedy There.….”
That’s Mahomes, Self Aware When Remarking Over The Second Half field Goal Thrown Away on Stop For The Bengals.
The Chiefs Torn Away the Threads Of Their Early Rushing Success And work The Shot Gun Exclusively. They ran Maybe One Or Two Successful Designed Runs. McKinnon Moved The Chain But A Far As Reclaiming And Retain Outright Control Of The Game, he Made Marginal Gains.
A Few Jets Sweeps With Hardman For Good measure.
The Bengals played two-high Shell Most The Game, Cajoling Kansas City Into the ground game.
Mahomes Wouldn’t Settle for What They Serve. He Just Continued To Drop Back, Shotgun And torpedoed Away At The Bengals Opportunistic Secondary. The Coaching Staff Watching On, Helplessly Indifferent Towards Assuaging The Monster They Created. Witnessing Mahomes Take Drop Back After Drop back To No Avail, Like A Character Hammering A Wall That Would Not Break. The Effects Of This Prolong Exposure To Ineffectiveness Showed.
“ …It's simple: overspecialize, and you breed in weakness. It's slow death.”
I Counted Three Instances Of Mahomes, Caught In Twirling Frenzy. Running Backwards But Trying To See Ahead. Scrambling In The Back Field That Ultimately Resulted In Moments Of Disorientating Confusion. Two Of which Came On The Final Drive With A Chance To Go. One. A Scamper to The Sideline That Netted A Gian The That Ended With A Sack.
This Image, when Contrasted To Joe Burrow In The Pocket, Who Succeeded On His Despite Despite His Line Giving Way to 16 Pressures. Joe Play To His Usual excellent calling. Move Forward And Left but Staying on Platform At All Times.
You Get The Since of two Different Games Played Within The Games, Within The Two Minds Of The Two Quarterbacks—one Losing His Composure As the Other Grew in Divergence.
In the First 15 Minutes Of The Game, The Chiefs Hung 21 Points On The Bengals Defense That could Do Little as Far As Pressure Mahomes Or Disrupt Receiver Patterns. In The 35 Minute Space After, Following That Five Minutes To go In The Half. The Chiefs Had Their Lead Turn To Rubble. Those Three Touchdown Hung Suspended One touchdown Favorites, To Forcing Overtime.
The Collapse Began To Materialize But Not Ber=fire The Football gods Graced Mahomes With Another More Opportunity For Redemption. In A Season That Never Seemed To Favor This Andy Reid Squad. Hapless Turnovers And Woeful Rushing. All Of The Favor shine On Them In the brightest Moments. The Chiefs Won The Coin Toss At The Head Of Over Time Processions, Again.
Mahomes Had Three Throw For The Rest of His Life; One That Should Have Resulted In An Interception. Another Disrupted and The Final One, Targeting Hill As He Did On the First Touchdown, into A Shallow corner. Hill Faced Bracket Coverage Most Of The Game. With A Safety Ove The Top And A Croner underneath. Only This Time Jessie Bates, Who Snatched Away A Pass From Ryan Tannehill In the Division Round, Took A Sharp Angle, Or Hills Skinny Post Route. The Angle Bates Took Made The already Difficult Throw, an Improbably completion, and An eventual Interception for defensive back Vonn Bell.
What Seemed Like A Formality; An Overtime Victory For Patrick Mahomes.
Furthermore, Mahomes Had Never Lost In The Playoffs When Leading By More Than A Touchdown, 37-0, According To ESPN. Moreover, The Chiefs Had Just One Lost In Nearly Three Months, week 17, Against the Bengals.
“I knew after we got that first stop it was in Joe’s hands,” defensive end Sam Hubbard said, “and we were good.”
The Formality Became Inevitability.
Chase And Burrow Soak Up All Of Jawing That Spilled Over From THE Season In Lead Up In This Game. Chase’s Once In A Era Performance for The Bengals In Week 17 Continues To Reign and The Benchmark For Exceptional Success Against KC. The 11/266 Game Only Overshadow by Burrow, Who Had scorched Earth Residue spattered All Over Him In The Finals Weeks Of The Season After Notch 971, Eight Touchdown and Zero In Two Games To Win The North. A Season That Cement The Dynamic Duo As Perhaps The Most Celebrated Tandem In A Cincy History Not short On Quarterback Wide Receiver Duos.
Burrow And Chase, The Eternal Relationship. The Two Found Each Other In CINCY after Leading LSU To The National Title In 2020. When They Roamed Baton Rouge Unbeaten.
The Chase-Burrow Connection Didn't Make The Splash It Had Their First Time Around Against This Defense. It produced An Int And a Touchdown, six receptions for 54 yards, and a touchdown. The Type Of Pedestrian Performance That Plague His Midseason Rookie Slump.
Before Joe Had Jamar Back, up To His Injury In Week 11 Of Last year, He Had Tyler Boyd And, To A More Promising Effect, His Fellow 2020 Rookie And Old For Tee Higgins.
When The Tigers Won The Natty In 2020, all of The LSU Praise and Glory, It Dented And Extinguished The Championship Luster And Glow, Of The Other Tigers, Clemson. Lead By Trevor Lawrence, The Presumptive Number 1 pick Had Been Available Two Years, And His Then Favorite target, Another Pro Level Receiver, Tee Higgins, Who Plays For The Bengals.
Higgins Struggled Against A Deft LSU Secondary, which Only Cratered His Appeal On The Next Level Ater He Got washed Away By An Equal Talented Ohio State Secondary.
With These Two Performances Following Him, Tee’s First Round Grade Got Dash Away. Higgins Became A SECOND round Pick In CINCY And Joined Burrow In Transforming The Team.
With Jamar Chase Drawing All The Action. Burrow Looked To Higgins, especially during Over the period, As An Alternative Option Down Field. Higgins And Chase are Build Very Differently. While Chase Explodes Down Field In Quick Short Burst, Higgins Extends His 6’4 angular Frame along The Boundary. His Expansive Catch Radius Makes Ball Placement Less Of An Issue For Burrow when under Pressure.
“Just Throw the ball Up And Go Up And Get It.”
Higgins Excelled In That Role at Clemson, And It's Translated Over To The Burrow Pocket Shoot Go-Style Zach Taylor’s offense.
Ahead Of The Drafting Of Chase. Beyond Burrow’s Injury. The two, Higgins And Burrow, Connected For 33 Catches Nearly 500 Yards In A Short Before Burrows Injury. Higgins Earned The Praise As The Bengals Next Great Wideout In The Shadow Of Former Great A.J.Green.
“I’m Excited For A Future With Tee”
On Sunday, That Future Appeared.
In The Over Time Burrow Target Tee Twice. Once For Nine Yards To Get The Drive Going, The Other For Eight To Keep The First DOWN going AND the Drive, Alive Before Evan McPherson Would Enter To End The Game. Higgins finished with six receptions and 103 receiving yards. An Average Of 17.4 Per Reception.
