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There was a point in the Bengals-Patriots game Saturday where the whole thing had taken on the look of Alabama beating down The Citadel the week before the Iron Bowl.
Here’s a snapshot of where the teams stood after the Bengals scored their final points of the first half on a four-yard touchdown pass from Joe Burrow to Trenton Irwin to take a 22–0 lead:
• The Bengals had 303 yards; the Patriots had 60.
• The Bengals had run 48 plays; the Patriots had 15.
• The Bengals had 22 first downs; the Patriots had two.
• All five of the Bengals’ possessions had made it into the red zone. The Patriots’ offense hadn’t crossed midfield (and wouldn’t until the final play of the third quarter).
It easily, absent an interception, a holding call that nullified a touchdown and two missed extra points, could’ve been, and probably should’ve been, 35–0. Even so, the thought of the game slipping away against a team Cincinnati had so thoroughly outclassed well into the third quarter seemed, well, ridiculous.
That it almost did should provide the defending AFC champs with a valuable lesson.
Yes, the Bengals left happy—pulling their 11th win out of that fire—but it happened in a very different way than anyone thought it would around 3 p.m. ET, with the still-growing Bengals making a play when every break was going against them.
“You can take it two ways,” safety Vonn Bell told me Saturday, as he was leaving the locker room in Foxborough. “Like, yeah, we want to finish, keep a goose egg, have a strong win that way. But adversity happens. And in this league, it’s always tough, winning December football in a hostile environment, weather conditions, everything. Just finding a way to win, that’s how you become a championship team—that’s the biggest thing. We finished in that regard.”
Bell, specifically, finished in that regard.
But the truth is, like he said, he probably shouldn’t have had to.
The trouble started with 19 minutes left and the score still 22–0. A third-and-1 conversion to get the Bengals inside the Patriots’ 30, again was negated by a holding call, and a miscommunication between Burrow and Ja’Marr Chase sent a Burrow throw into the arms of New England’s most explosive player, Marcus Jones, who returned the interception 69 yards for a touchdown.
On New England’s next possession, the offense came alive, with Mac Jones guiding an 11-play, 77-yard touchdown drive to cut the deficit to 22–12. After that, a Hail Mary type of throw on a third-and-29 from midfield ricocheted into the waiting hands of Jakobi Meyers to get the Patriots to within 22–18 (Nick Folk matched Evan McPherson with two missed PATs). And then a Chase fumble, the fourth of his career, put the Patriots in position at the Cincinnati 43 with 3:12 left to drain the clock and win the game.
“You felt the momentum shift when they were making those plays on the ball,” Bell says. “But you just can’t bat an eye. Gotta go out there and be a problem solver and just make plays and really just put the onus on yourself— So it was like, just do your job, and we’ll go out there and chip away.”
Bell made the dam break for the home team on first-and-goal with 1:05 left, with the Patriots at the Cincinnati 5. And there are two things that led to his game-saving forced fumble.
The first is in an inside-run drill the Bengals practice with their defensive players, where they put bags down on the field and have the back try to run between the bags, with two defenders fitting the run. The first defender form-tackles the back, and the second defender goes after the ball—it’s pretty standard for training camp, and Cincinnati makes a point to keep doing it in season. So Bell’s been working on his punch (and, with his instincts, he’s pretty good with it anyway).
The second thing was the personnel grouping. Expecting the Patriots would run the ball to bleed the clock on first down, defensive coordinator Lou Anarumo put a third defensive tackle into the game, sending 340-pound Josh Tupou in to play next to D.J. Reader and B.J. Hill, and sending Bell on a run blitz off the edge. That Tupou was in there to help tie up blockers gave Reader a better shot to pop free, which he did on the play—stone-walling Rhamondre Stevenson and leaving the second man, Bell, to punch the ball free.
“And it came out,” Bell says, laughing. “It was just making plays for the team, laying it all out, and going out there and having fun with the guys.”
Hill wound up falling on it, more or less finishing the Patriots, capping the story for Bell and cementing a good lesson for everyone.
“Things happen,” Bell says. “They got a pick-six, a fumble, they got the little Hail Mary pass. Things happen. They get paid, too. We just wanted to finish. We want to play a perfect game. But adversity happens, and you gotta know how to respond. So that’s why I said that’s what makes it so great for this team, to find out a way to win in times of unconventional things that are happening in the game, in the moment.
“It’s learning how to finish. That’s what it’s gonna take coming down the stretch.”
The Bengals finished with 442 yards to the Patriots’ 285, and 28 first downs to the Patriots’ 15—Cincinnati happily took the win, and the lesson.
Next up? The Bills, in Week 17, at home Monday night, in a game that will go a long way in determining how the top seeds in the AFC bracket will shake out. In talking about that one, Bell told me that he sees his team as “one of the tops in the league, for sure. But we gotta go out there and prove it week in and week out.”
Bell and his teammates know it’ll take a much cleaner effort to beat the Bills. And maybe a few plays such as the one he made to bail the Bengals out of a mess against the Patriots.
