October 24, 2021. Perhaps the biggest game of Zac Taylor’s head coaching career, to date. The task? Go into Baltimore and beat the Ravens. The reward? Taking over top spot, not only in the AFC North, but also in the AFC. If there was ever a time for the Bengals to make a statement, this was it.
For the first time in 11 games, the Bengals lost the coin toss. The Ravens deferred and the Bengals got the first. Overall, not a lot happened in the 1st quarter. It was a tight defensive battle. The ravens DL was getting some penetration, while their CB’s were sticking to our WR’s. For the Bengals defense, similarily, the DL was getting through. Larry Ogunjobi came up with a key 3rd down sack, and the secondary was performing well.
The Bengals did manage to get a field goal on their second drive, which was matched by the Ravens early in the second quarter.
In the second quarter, the pace picked up a little. Following the Ravens’ field goal, each team punted once. On their second posession of the quarter, the Bengals offence got rolling. In fact, two plays were all they needed. After a 9 yard pass to Higgins, Joe Burrow took a deep shot to CJ Uzomah, who was able to fend off the defender to get into the endzone.
Keeping up with the scoring pace, the Ravens answered back with a TD of their own. It was the first time in the game where they really started to break down the Bengals defence. Lamar Jackson found the rookie Bateman for 20 yards, and later Hollywood Brown for 18 over the middle. The Ravens eventually made it down to the Bengals 1 yard line, where Devonta Freeman ran it in for the score, tying the game at 10.
With less than two minutes left, the Bengals took the field to work their league best two minute drill. After a few short passes, Burrow found Ja’Marr Chase for 13 to get into Baltimore territory. A couple plays later, he found Chase once again, this time for 26. After the clock ticked down to 10 seconds, they had one shot at the end zone. However, the pass for Tee Higgins fell incomplete. Evan McPherson kicked a 30 yard field goal to give the Bengals a 13-10 lead at the half.
Baltimore started out very strong in the second half, finding holes deep in the Bengals secondary. Mark Andrews fumbled on the first play of the drive, but was able to recover. After that, the Ravens only needed to plays to find the end zone. First, Lamar Jackson completed a 39 yard pass to Bateman, which was followed up with a 39 yard TD pass to Brown. At that point, it was 17-13 for the Ravens.
This was a chance for the Ravens defence to build some momentum and allow their offence to draw off. However, this Bengals team is more resilient than in recent years. The Ravens went on a quick scoring drive, and the Bengals followed it up with a quick one of their own, needing only 4 plays to score. Passes of 17 and 21 yards were completed to Chase, with a 5 yard run by Mixon sanwitched in between. Those plays set up a 32 yard TD pass to CJ Uzomah, his second long TD of the game. That restored the Bengals lead, making it 20-17.
That TD seemed to be the turning point of the game, as the Ravens failed to score any points afterwards. While there were certainly times where the defence bent, they did not break. Unlike the last few meetings against the Ravens, they were able to come up with big plays on key 3rd downs to get off the field. Trey Hendrickson came up with one of those plays, sacking Lamar Jackson, while on other occasions, the secondary came up clutch.
After making it 20-17, the Bengals offence proceeded to run up the score. A three play drive ended with Ja’Marr Chase taking a slant 82 yards for the score. He did well to break a couple of takles and then out run everyone else. It was at that point where it seemed like they might truly pull this off.
The next drive was also a good one. Burrow completed longer passes to all three of Boyd, Higgins, and Chase. However, on 3rd & goal, Burrow lobbed up an ill-advised pass that was intercepted in the endzone. Luckily, the Ravens could not capitalize on the turnover.
The Bengals scored twice more after that. Both drives were run heavy. Mixon was able to find the end zone from 21 yards out, and then Perine did the same from 46 yards out.
The final score was 41-17, and the Bengals came up with their most improtant victory in the Zac Taylor era, thus far. While there are certainly areas that need some adjustments, as a whole, it was a very good performance against a very good team.
Week by week, more narratives continue to change. As it stands, the 5-2 Bengals sit atop the ACF, albeit through tiebreakers. They will travel to New York next week to take on a depleated Jets team.
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