Credit Zac Taylor, Joe Burrow For Allowing Bengals To Get Back To Winning on Their Terms

DENVER – So much of football is dictating the terms by which the game is played. The successful teams do that more often than not.

Sunday, it was the key to the Bengals claiming their toughest, grittiest and perhaps most significant win of the season.

The Bengals have a franchise quarterback in Joe Burrow. He’s a quarterback that can take over a game when he has time to throw consistently.

But Zac Taylor made a calculated gamble Sunday in Denver. He decided to draw back the playbook a bit in the first half and allow his defense to dictate how the game was going to play out.

The Bengals converted just 4-of-13 on third down. Burrow completed just 15-of-22 passes for 157 yards. The Bengals entered the red zone just once and didn’t convert a touchdown.

Zac Taylor leaned very heavily on his defense Sunday and it paid off – huge. There will be plenty of time to dissect whether or not this offense is viable going forward (possibly into the playoffs) when it’s spinning its wheels in the first half.

But for now, give Taylor his props for asking Burrow to not make mistakes early and play with a lead, albeit three points for most of the first half, highlighted by Evan McPherson’s team-record 58-yard field goal before half. In losses to the Chargers and 49ers, they fell behind 24-0 and 17-6 in the first half. Sunday, they led 6-3 at the break.

“It wasn’t sexy but man, it’s what we needed and all our guys stayed patient and it paid off,” Taylor said.

“It’s like that sometimes,” Burrow told me after. “Not every game is going to be throwing for three touchdown passes and 300 yards and all that. They’re a really, really good defense that has invested a lot in a secondary and linebackers. They’re very well coached and you’ve got to give them credit. But, you know, I was proud of our guys that we made the plays when they counted. Critical third downs, down the stretch. Exciting win.”

And a critical win that puts the Bengals in great shape for the final three weeks. Great teams of the past have built their foundation around defense, starting with the 1970s Steelers.

“For some reason, the powers that be always thought people want to see scoring. Defense were the poor stepchildren,” Hall of Fame nose tackle Joe Greene once said.

On Sunday, defense wasn’t the poor stepchild. It was the belle of the ball. They were going up against an offense that had two great running backs in Javonte Williams and Melvin Gordon but not an explosive offense with Teddy Bridgewater (and Drew Lock) at quarterback.

Taylor thought his defense could keep Bridgewater from getting the ball to Jerry Jeudy, Courtland Sutton and Noah Fant and he was right. Tim Patrick caught the only TD pass of the day from Denver, and it was late in the third quarter, after Lock filled in for the injured Bridgewater.

The Broncos had just 133 yards rushing and 159 through the air, all this without corner Chidobe Awuze and corner Trae Waynes starting but still working his way back to full strength. Taylor was so happy with his interior run game and their ability to contain Williams and Gordon inspired him to give game balls to all his nose tackles, starting with Larry Ogunjobi and D.J. Reader.

“It’s everything. We have a lot of belief in our offense and what we’re capable of at any moment,” Taylor told me. “Scoring on a two-play drive, scoring on a one-play drive. When our defense plays the way they do, you can just feel it.

You feel like they have control over the game, and it allows you to play a pretty dirty game. [You have to] Keep your poise on offense and [I’m] just really impressed with [Defensive Coordinator] Lou Anarumo and the staff and the job the defense has done.”

Fans have rightly been concerned about the offense struggling badly in the first half but Taylor figured he was going to put this game, the most important of the season, in the hands of the team’s most consistent group.

Then, when the Broncos went up 10-9, the explosive Bengals offense returned at just the right moment. Run to Joe Mixon for 12 yards and then a 56-yard catch-and-run TD to Tyler Boyd to close out the third quarter. That put the Bengals up 15-10 and the defense did the rest, just by never giving up.

Khalid Kareem stripped Lock of the football inside the Cincinnati 15 with just over 10 minutes left, keeping Denver from going back on top.

“Business as usual,” Taylor said. “We’ve got to go score a touchdown, that was the key. There’s no panic from our guys. We’ve played really good football in the second half. It’s been the start that we’ve needed to jumpstart, and we tried to today. It’s a tough group. We took what they gave us and bided our time for the opportunities to come up.

“I said this last week, I thought Joe Burrow did a great job not forcing the shots that we were trying to call. He ran sometimes and checked the ball down a couple times and that was a really good job being patient. Our guys were poised, and a good two-play drive and I think our defense got the turnover on the next series so just a really good collective effort there.”

The Bengals didn’t blink Sunday thanks to their defense. The Bengals won because their defense held just long enough for Joe Burrow to hit Tyler Boyd for 19-yard before halftime and 56 yards in the third quarter. Both times were cases of quarterback and receiver making winning plays under pressure. Boyd sitting in the field so the Bengals could call time out and Burrow finding a play late in the third quarter that they had repped in practice this past week.

“You have to take those lessons from the Chicagos that we’ve played. We lost those games because we panicked a little bit, and we had some turnovers. We stuck with the run. It wasn’t always sexy,” Taylor said. “We tried to keep ourselves in manageable situations and then Joe [Burrow] started making some plays with his feet which really jumpstarted us to get those first downs and that’s critical when your quarterback can do that for you.”

Lesson from Sunday: Winning is sexy enough.