I had some free time on Saturday and I found myself mired in a YouTube rabbit hole, watching video after video as I mentally prepared myself for the AFC Championship game the next day.
One of the videos that popped up in my feed was the highlight reel of the 2019 Bengals/Dolphins contest, what some have called the greatest game nobody saw.
I don’t know about that, but I do know that even two years later watching those highlights gives me chills.
Not because the Bengals made a miraculous comeback, outscoring the Dolphins 23-7 in the fourth quarter to force overtime, but because I distinctly remember sitting in the office working on the basketball preview begging them to stop scoring.
That loss, which came in overtime and at the expense of a few years off my life, clinched the No. 1 pick for the Bengals. A few months later, that pick became Joe Burrow.
There is no telling where this team would be if they had managed to blow that deficit and win the game against Miami. Cincinnati defeated Cleveland one week later and, with a win over the Dolphins, would have finished the season at 3-13 overall.
Washington finished 3-13 overall that same season. Would the win over Miami be enough to drop the Bengals in the draft order? It very well could have been, and with WFT having just chosen Dwayne Haskins the year before, the likelihood of them dumping the pick and allowing someone else to grab Burrow would have been higher than I would like to imagine.
As I relived the wizardry of Andy Dalton shredding the Miami defense for 16 points in 29 seconds, something no NFL team had done before, there was a very real sense of panic. I didn’t want the Bengals to lose, but I certainly didn’t want them winning that game. If you’re going to lose double-digit games in a season, you better get something good out of it.
Burrow was the good. Highlights of his spectacular season were the only thing making the Bengals games themselves worthwhile. If we can just get the first overall pick…
Jump ahead a little over three years and here we sit, a little over a week away from the Bengals’ first Super Bowl appearance in 33 years. There are no words to describe this feeling, there is no playbook on celebrating to draw from. There are a lot of people in this area who simply don’t know how to celebrate this. I’m one of them.
I wasn’t ready to deal with these emotions. For most of Sunday afternoon, I was angry. I knew Kansas City was beatable, being down 21-3 was a little embarrassing. The national media pundits were warming up the vocal chords and prepared themselves to sing the praises of Patrick Mahomes and Kansas City for another two weeks.
My emotions shifted from anger to confusion right around halftime, and then that nagging feeling of hope began to creep back in the longer the third quarter wore on and the closer the Bengals got to tying the game.
Hope is a dangerous feeling in this city, especially at this time of year. We’ve seen playoff runs end before they began thanks to ill-timed injuries, poorly-timed fumbles, or just general ineptitude and ‘aligning our payroll to our resources,’ whatever that means.
This time, it’s different. This team is different.
First playoff win in 31 years. Nine sacks, on the road, against the top seed. An 18-point rally on the road against the two-time defending AFC Champions.
None of that happens without Joe Burrow. Joe Burrow might not happen if it weren’t for that Miami loss in 2019.
It’s hard to take credit away from the defense for what they accomplished against the Chiefs, but look at the players who stepped up and made the plays. Eli Apple was a free-agent add. B.J. Hill came over (with a draft pick, maybe?) in a trade with the Giants. Trey Hendrickson was a free-agent add. Mike Hilton’s interception against Tennessee was a key play. He joined the team as a free agent.
How many of those players are here if Burrow isn’t?
The organization’s sudden shift toward competency and free-agent spending didn’t happen overnight. It took time for the culture and the roster to be shaped the way Zac Taylor wanted them.
It’s a lot easier to sell that culture when the guy leading the offense is Joe Burrow.