Joe Burrow, who has a case to be the NFL's MVP and may very well be the Comeback Player of the Year again, plans to head to Paycor Stadium Sunday and go through his usual day-after game routine and then go home to do what we'll all do.
Wait and watch.
Trey Hendrickson, who Burrow says should be the NFL Defensive Player of the Year, could very well end up in the weight room Sunday. The way his head coach Zac Taylor sees it, any day after a game or season, even if he virtually locked up the NFL sack title. is just another day at the office for Hendrickson.
Left tackle Orlando Brown Jr., is going to do what he always does. He's going to open up his home to his offensive line. Anybody else on the roster can wander on in, too, on Sunday to see if the Jets can beat the Dolphins and the Chiefs can beat the Broncos to put the Bengals into the playoffs this week.
"It's like the mob meetup," said Brown, as usual, the last to exit any locker room, even if it is in the Pittsburgh visitors' locker room celebrating a win that keeps them alive on the NFL's last day.
"The doors will be open."
Brown's home is as good as any place to start to explain why the Bengals, left for dead five weeks ago at 4-8 by these same Steelers, are still watching 35 days later. Why Taylor's locker-room culture didn't fold into the abyss of business decisions and next-year agendas.
"The love and respect we have for each other," said slot cornerback Mike Hilton, the old Steeler enjoying his tenth win on either side of this rivalry. "Guys want to win games for each other and over the last month we played our best brand football. Outside of Philadelphia, nobody really beat us. We felt like if we could fix a few things, this could happen, and it did."
You've got Burrow, and Hendrickson, and Ja’Marr Chase’s 10 catches capping off a rare receiver Triple Crown. When the trio was named to the Pro Bowl last Thursday, Taylor offered it was no coincidence they are three of his hardest workers and vessels to the younger players.
But Taylor's locker room also starts with weatherbeaten backup vets like Cody Ford, who started at right tackle in place of Amarius Mims, the monstrous rookie who blanked defending NFL sack champion T.J. Watt in this game back on Dec. 1. With Mims reportedly fighting a broken hand, Ford drew a start at his fourth different position this season.
The locker room also starts with guys like Mims, a young guy learning the daily pounding of the NFL on the fly. When Ford had his ankle rolled teaming with right guard Alex Cappa to block for running back Khalil Herbert’s first-down run on third-and-one on the Bengals' second series, Mims had to come in on an emergency situation.
Dicey because who can block T.J. Watt with two hands?
Then Ford came back a snap later despite the limp. When Ford finally had to come out in the third quarter for a stretch, Mims anchored much of a 15-play drive that consumed three precious points and eight-and-a-half minutes.
With Ford gutting out 60 off-and-on snaps and Mims manning up for 14 more, Watt, a past Defensive Player of the Year, didn't appear on the stat sheet.
"Cody Ford is not a guy that we talk enough about. This guy has played left guard, he started at left tackle, he started at right tackle," Taylor said. We said this week, hey, you're going to start at right tackle against T.J. Watt, one of the best to ever do it, and he told me I'll do whatever you want. If you want me to play quarterback, I'll play quarterback.
"You've got to have guys like that … you've got guys like Cody Ford who are willing to do whatever it takes to get the job done, our literal definition of a Bengal, and he's a guy that's unsung … (Mims) stepped up, man, and I know he's got a lot of pain. I'm proud of him going in there and delivering and I'm proud of Cody."
It was Burrow who said at 4-8 that the cornerstones of the franchise would be defined by the next month. His answer was 5-0.
"I think we have had our great players playing great. For the most part, they have all year," Burrow said. "But we've had some young guys step up in spots. They've been showing a lot of promise. So that's exciting to have some of those guys step up, step up like that, and guys that we can count on."
Young guys on a defense that reinvented itself 35 days ago after the Steelers' 44-point onslaught. Young guys like rookie cornerback Josh Newton and you can even throw in four-year edge vet Joseph Ossai because since Sam Hubbard left the starting lineup with a knee injury, Ossai has had at least a half sack in each of his last four starts.
Ossai, Newton and defensive captain Germaine Pratt at linebacker, combined to set the tone on the Steelers' second series. It will be recalled on the first series of Dec. 1, Steelers wide receiver George Pickens broke a screen for a 17-yard touchdown.
On Saturday, Pratt and Newton led the charge to wrap up Pickens on the second play to stymie the screen for no gain as Newton fought through the block. And when the scowling Ossai finished up by spilling Pickens rudely into the Bengals bench, two messages had been sent. Pickens, their big-play guy, had only that catch despite five more targets on a night he had three drops, and the Bengals would not be shoved around in a run game they gave the Steelers just 3.2 yards per carry.
"Our main job was to take him away," Hilton said. "Their run game and take away their explosive receiver, you win a lot of games … We shaded the safety his way … We took the run away early. Took that away from them and forced Russell to throw into tight windows."
Or, as Cam Taylor-Britt said, "We tackled a lot better."
It was Taylor-Britt who scolded himself for not setting the edge last month on that Pickens' touchdown. On Saturday, Taylor-Britt got a game ball for his game-changing fourth-and-inches tackle of running back Jaylen Warren in the last minute of the first half. It led to the field goal that provided the winning margin.
"We got a chance to redefine our identity as a defense a little bit," Hendrickson said. "That starts with the coaches, the players at 4-8 responded to the call. Credit the leaders in this locker room. (Defensive tackle) B.J. Hill being vocal, leading our defense. Germaine Pratt flying around out there. (Safety) Geno Stone making a lot of plays for us. Josh Newton stepping up. I could go on."
Taylor hands out his game balls with the flip of a Big 12 Player of a Year quarterback. He also does it practicing what he preaches to his locker room in front of his locker room.
Linebacker Shaka Heyward got a game ball, which is nice because it turned out he had just as big a say in this one as his older Hall of Fame cousin. And Steelers defensive tackle Cam Heyward always has a lot to say in this rivalry. On Saturday, it was three tipped Burrow passes headed to completions.
But Shaka Heyward, playing in his sixth NFL game as a special teams core player who has been on and off the practice squad for two years, got a huge turnover when he reached in to force a fumbled punt return at the Pittsburgh 33 with 2:46 left in a 10-7 first half.
That set off a rather bizarre chain of events that included Burrow giving the ball right back on a deflected interception and Steelers head coach Mike Tomlin giving it right back to the Bengals where the whole thing dam near started on Taylor-Britt's stop to make it 13-7 at the half.
But Taylor always gives out game balls for turnovers. He doesn't always for passes defensed. But he does on third down in a game to go to the playoffs. And it was nice, because sophomore cornerback DJ Ivey was looking at getting anything but a game ball when a Steelers' punt accidentally kicked off his foot for what appeared to a crushing turnover at the Bengals 38 that led to the field goal that cut it to 19-17.
Taylor said there was nothing Ivey could have done to avoid touching the ball. But way before that, on that second Steelers series of the second half after the Bengals took a 16-7 lead, Ivey did do something on a deep shot to Pickens. Just off IR halfway through the season, it was one of Ivey's four scrimmage snaps on Saturday and one of 59 this season. And his second pass defensed.
A game ball.
"We focus on bringing the right guys that when the times are the toughest, they're going to respond the right way," Taylor said. "That's coaches, that's players. That's all we saw from this team when it got really tough."
They'll gut it out at least one more day. A day where homes like Orlando Brown Jr.'s become locker rooms after a season locker rooms became homes.
"We'll see what pulls up," Brown says.
