Revisiting the Cincinnati Bengals’ Week 10 loss and determining why they fell to the Tennessee Titans in a late 24-20 defeat.
In Week 9, the Cincinnati Bengals offense came up against a stellar Jacksonville Jaguars defense. It was never going to be easy for them to win, but once star wide receiver A.J. Green lost his mind and put Jaguars cornerback Jalen Ramsey into multiple chokeholds before continuously trying to punch him through his helmet, the offense couldn’t even average a single yard per play.
It left us wondering how they might respond in the following game. For the most part, the answer was surprisingly well. For that Week 10 contest, they faced a more complete, balanced team in Tennessee and even with blunders and miscues the Bengals came really close to a road upset of the AFC South contenders.
Alas, the mostly stout Cincinnati defense couldn’t hold up in the end, and Tennessee’s final drive proved to be the game-winner. Here’s why the Bengals fell short.
3. Missing The Point (after touchdown)
Cincinnati wasn’t able to score on their first offensive drive while they went on to allow Tennessee to do exactly that, leaving them in an early 7-0 deficit. Surprisingly, Cincinnati immediately responded with their own touchdown drive to potentially tie thing up. Of course, since the Bengals are well-versed in finding ways to screw themselves over, that potential never became anything more.
After they lost multiple games last year because longtime kicker Mike Nugent decided to somehow miss six PATs, his replacement took a page out of that failed playbook. Randy Bullock saw his attempt after the touchdown go wide left, leaving his team down 7-6. It probably didn’t seem like much at the time. With the first quarter not even over at the time of the miss, it shouldn’t have been, either. We wouldn’t truly see this flub make its impact until the end of the game, however.
With Tennessee able to score on their final offensive drive, they put themselves up 24-20. That drive took up practically all of Cincinnati’s remaining time as just 36 seconds remained on the clock by the time the offense was back on the field. Based on the margin, only a touchdown would prevent this from being a Bengals loss. Because of that, Cincinnati had to desperately fight for small chunks of yardage along the sideline just to get in range for a last-second Hail Mary (on that of course fell well short of the end zone).
If Cincinnati had that extra point from earlier, though? The game situation changes dramatically.
Rather than needing to score a touchdown, Cincinnati instead would have been down only three. A touchdown would still be welcomed of course, but now they could’ve kept the game going into overtime with a field goal. Bullock may not be an especially good kicker relative to his peers, but he’s still made 80 percent of his field goal attempts this season and has a strong leg. Giving him a chance at even a 50+ yard attempt was far from Cincinnati’s worst option.
With the early PAT miss though, Cincinnati ended up one point short of even having that as a consideration at the end of the game. Banking on not only a long Bullock make but also good fortune in overtime isn’t a great outcome, but it would’ve been a much more desirable outcome than that Fail Mary by Andy Dalton.