INGLEWOOD, Calif. _ Head coach Zac Taylor's Bengals saw one season end here at SoFi Stadium in the last minute of a Super Bowl. After another last-minute heartbreaker Sunday night to the Chargers, 34-27, Taylor insisted his team can still make the playoffs.
"I do. I'm not saying it to convince others," Taylor said after his team fell to 4-7 with six of the losses coming by seven points or less. "I say what I believe right now. When you watch this team compete, the guys we've got, the coaches we've got. I love going to work every single day.
"By no stretch is our season over with," Taylor said.
What he saw this week was the Bengals flirt with their biggest road comeback ever when quarterback Joe Burrow fired three touchdown passes in a span of less than nine minutes against the Chargers' stringiest NFL scoring defense to erase a 21-point lead.
The last toss was a 17-yard improvisation to wide receiver Ja'Marr Chase that tied it at 27 with 12:21 left and marked the most points against the Chargers this season.
The score was set up by the Bengals forcing the Chargers' fifth turnover of the season. Linebacker Logan Wilson's knee kicked the ball out of quarterback Justin Herbert's hand and it was recovered by safety Geno Stone to encapsulate a rigid defensive effort that allowed only a field goal in the second half.
It stayed that way through two missed field goals by Bengals kicker Evan McPherson and it didn't end until Chargers running back J.K. Dobbins' 29-yard touchdown run with 18 seconds left.
"They made one more play than we did," Taylor said. "That's been the story of our season."
It spoiled another Braveheart performance by Burrow and his band of wide receivers re-united with the monster return of Tee Higgins' 148-yard effort. After missing the last three games with a quad injury, he had his biggest game in two years and tied for the second biggest of his career while NFL leading receiver Ja'Marr Chase added two more touchdowns and 75 yards on seven catches.
JOE AGAIN
Burrow, manipulating the pocket at his best, had another triple-digit passer rating until the last two incompletions left him at 98.4 on 28 of 50 passes for 356 yards. The three touchdowns give him an NFL-leading 27 and he now has pitched for 784 yards in the last two games.
But he wasn't pleased.
"I missed some throws down the stretch I usually make. So that was disappointing. Just didn't make winning plays at the end," Burrow said. "Our margin of error is slim, so we need to make those plays. I need to make those plays. We all need to make those plays."
He seemed to be displeased with two throws, one each in the last two series.
"I missed Ja'Marr on a go and I missed Ja'Marr on a slant," Burrow said.
On a first-and-10 from his own 30 with 1:10 left, Burrow had Chase open deep down the right side, but couldn't connect.
Chase, who got nearly half of his yards on a 32-yard YAC in space on the first series, thought it would have been nice.
"A walk-off tuddy," Chase said. "We just missed it."
TEE AND JA'MARR
Higgins announced his return on a fourth-and-two, 42-yard touchdown pass that cut the Chargers' lead to 27-20 with 2:53 left in the third quarter. He had already made some game-breakers in the first half on slants when he converted a fourth-and-one for eight yards and ran another for 20 yards with three defenders on him. This time he open long with the Chargers sitting.
"We all saw the first half they were jumping those in-breakers," Higgins said. "Joe saw it. On that play, he gave me the signal and the rest is history."
Chase thought they were going to make history when they hot the ball back with 1:26 left in the time game. When he scored to tie it, "I thought we were going to win."
If they had come back and won, it would have tied their biggest comeback win of a 21-point deficit, last done on 1995 Christmas Eve against the Eagles. The other one was the storied 1981 opener against Seattle when backup quarterback Turk Schonert came off the bench to lead a win that sparked the first AFC title.
Chase also scored on a fourth down. His first one came on an absolutely must four-yard slant on fourth-and-goal for their first touchdown of the night about ten minutes into the second half that cut it to 23-13.
SEEING RED
The flow of the game was set on the Bengals' first two red-zone forays, pitting the NFL's second-best red-zone offense scoring touchdowns inside-the-20 against the NFL's second red-zone defense preventing the same.
The Chargers defense won when they allowed two field goals
The Bengals nosed into the 20 on Burrow's 32-yard flip to Chase into space cutting over the middle as he went over 1,000 yards for the fourth time in his four-year career.
But the Bengals, who came into the game with the fewest penalties in the league, were plagued by them all night and committed two here when tight end Tanner Hudson was called for an illegal shift and Burrow was called for intentional grounding. Evan McPherson was called on to hit a 26-yarder to give them a 3-0 lead.
On the next series, the Bengals used two big plays from another wide receiver to get into the red. This time it was Higgins, splitting the middle for 20 yards and then converting a fourth-and-one on an eight-yard slant.
But facing a third-and-two from the nine, Burrow couldn't connect with rookie wide receiver Jermaine Burton in the end zone and McPherson hit another chip shot to cut the Chargers' lead to 7-6.
D STORY
The defense had what legendary Bengals radio analyst Dave Lapham calls one of those "Tale of Two Halves."
Chargers quarterback Justin Herbert went off for 183 yards in the first half on 10 of 14 passing and a near perfect passer rating of 153.3. He hit his first seven passes, five of them for at least 20 yards. He added another plus-20 late in the half and he didn't get any more until the last series with his side-line arrows of 28 and 27 yards to rookie wide receiver Ladd McConkey.
"Just needed a break, needed halftime, needed to readjust and just get our feet underneath us and get guys confidence in each other," Taylor said. "They stepped up and guys were flying around making plays. That's the defense we expect to see. Momentum turned our way and guys were just stepping up. I mean I saw so many guys make big plays there in the second half and that's what we're counting on. Just couldn't get it done."
The big plays that haunted them at the start of the night and the missed tackles that have plagued them all year re-surfaced on three of their last four plays in a span of 27 seconds. After the balls to McConkey, Dobbins avoided two tackles to win it with 18 seconds left.
Until then, the Bengals flummoxed Herbert in the second half. He was seven of 22 for just 114 yards and he finished with a lower passer rating than Burrow at 94.3.
"We have a great defensive coordinator," Pro Bowl sacker Trey Hendrickson of Lou Anarumo. "That's his job to make checks and adjustments. Put guys in the right places to be successful and I think the second half went that way in the first half. I think there are a lot of things (in the first half) individually we could do on our end."
LOU MOVE
After halftime, Anarumo went with rookie cornerback Josh Newton in favor of Cam Taylor-Britt and was rewarded with two passes defensed and three tackles. DJ Turner also offered a strong game on the other corner with three passes defensed.
But on his last one, a rather spectacular play on a deep ball to wide receiver Quentin Johnston at the Bengals 8 in the last minute of the third quarter, Turner hurt his clavicle and had to leave. Taylor-Britt, who had a half-sack on an early blitz, came back in to finish the game.
He shared the sack with Hendrickson, who boosted his league-leading total to 11.5.
Taylor was blunt about the struggles of Taylor-Britt, his best cornerback at the beginning of the season who has now been benched a few times.
"Consistency," Taylor said. "He's working on it, we talk about it a lot. We still have high expectations for him."
