In a weird way, the stage for the most impactful thing we saw on Sunday may have been set in a relatively meaningless Fiesta Bowl three years ago. You’ll have to follow me on this one.
If you Google “Joe Burrow UCF hit,” you’ll see it. In the first quarter of that January 2019 game, Burrow took a vicious blow while a defender was returning a pick-six that put LSU down 14–3 against undefeated Central Florida. After an up-and-down first year in Baton Rouge, after transferring from Ohio State, Burrow was leading a team some thought would pack it in that day. Instead, the hit itself sparked something in the quarterback that became contagious.
The Tigers rallied to beat UCF 40–32. But something even bigger grew from it.
“We played UCF and he got hit, and they were saying how that transformed him,” his LSU teammate Ja’Marr Chase said late Sunday afternoon. “But he just … after that hit, I just felt like he got back into the playbook looking at more stuff than he even needed to. He started realizing what his job really was, and he took off from there.”
And then?
“He was just real big on communication and timing with his receivers,” Chase continued.
LSU won a national title the following year, and yet another payoff came in Paul Brown Stadium on Sunday—with Burrow and Chase teammates again, and their Bengals facing an impossible third-and-27 from the Chiefs’ 41, with 3:14 to go, tied with the two-time defending AFC champion Chiefs at 31. And that’s because it’s a play that happened thanks, again, to all the time the two have spent building that communication.
The call, as Zac Taylor explained it to me, had a seven-man protection on, since Kansas City had been blitzing. To Burrow’s left, there was a two-man progression, with Taylor giving the quarterback instructions that they needed nine yards or so to set up an Evan McPherson field goal. To his right, alone, Chase was deployed, per Taylor, “as a yes-no for the quarterback, based on whether the Chiefs pressed the receiver. Corner Charvarius Ward did, so Chase said he “just took a speed release, got to the outside and ran a go.”
From there, Burrow put up an absolute dime, knowing exactly where Chase would be, and Chase smoothly snagged it and passed the sticks just as Ward pushed him out of bounds.
“That chemistry, they’ve invested thousands of reps before they ever became Bengals on that type of throw and catch,” Taylor said. “We saw it on the LSU tape, we are now seeing it on the Bengals tape and it’s just … it’s a fun thing to watch.”
On this Sunday, how Chase and Burrow have shaken up the Bengals’ identity was clear.
In the process, they just so happened to shake up the AFC playoff picture, too.
