After Bengals’ massive comeback falls short, Zac Taylor still has a playoff berth in sight; Ja’Marr Chase, Tee Higgins reunite in style

INGLEWOOD, Calif. _ Head coach Zac Taylor’s Bengals saw a season end in the final minute of a Super Bowl here at SoFi Stadium. After another last-minute heartbreaker Sunday night against the Chargers, 34-27, Taylor insisted his team can still make the playoffs.

“I do. I don’t say it to convince others,” Taylor said after his team fell to 4-7, with six of the losses coming by seven points or less. “Now I’m saying what I believe. When you see this team compete, the guys we have, the coaches we have, I enjoy going to work every day.

“Our season is far from over,” Taylor said.

What he saw this week was the Bengals flirting with their greatest comeback yet as quarterback Joe Burrow fired three touchdown passes against the Chargers’ most stringent NFL scoring defense in less than nine minutes to erase a 21-point lead .

The final toss was a 17-yard improv to wide receiver Ja’Marr Chase, which tied the score at 27 with 12:21 left and set up the most points against the Chargers this season.

The score was set up by the Bengals, forcing the Chargers’ fifth turnover of the season. Linebacker Logan Wilson’s knee kicked the ball out of quarterback Justin Herbert’s hand and the ball was recovered by safety Stone to cap a rigid defensive effort that allowed only a field goal in the second half.

It stayed that way until two missed field goals by Bengals kicker Evan McPherson and it didn’t end until Chargers running back JK Dobbins’ 29-yard touchdown run with 18 seconds left.

“They’ve made one more play than we have,” Taylor said. “That’s the story of our season.”

It spoiled another Braveheart performance from Burrow and his group of wide receivers, reunited with the monstrous return of Tee Higgins’ 148-yard effort. After missing the last three games with a quad injury, he had his biggest game in two years and tied for the second-biggest of his career, while NFL leader Ja’Marr Chase added two more touchdowns and 75 yards on seven catches.

Manipulating the pocket at his best, Burrow once again had a triple-digit passer rating until the final two incompletions left him at 98.4 on 28 of 50 passing for 356 yards. The three touchdowns give him an NFL-leading 27 and he has now thrown for 784 yards in the last two games.

“I missed a couple of throws on the stretch that I usually make. So that was disappointing. I didn’t end up making any game-winning plays,” Burrow said. “Our margin for error is small, so we have to make those plays. I have to make those plays. We all have to make those plays.”

He appeared to be unhappy with two throws, one each in the last two series.

“I missed Ja’Marr on the road and I missed Ja’Marr for a moment,” Burrow said.

On a first-and-10 from his own 30 with 1:10 left, Burrow had Chase open deep on the right sideline, but he couldn’t connect.

Chase, who got nearly half his yards on a 32-yard YAC in space on the first series, thought it would have been fun.

“A runaway buddy,” Chase said. “We just missed it.”

Higgins announced his return on a fourth-and-2, 42-yard touchdown pass that cut the Chargers’ lead to 27-20 with 2:53 left in the third quarter. He had already made some playmakers on slants in the first half when he converted a fourth-and-1 for eight yards and ran another for 20 yards with three defenders on him. This time he opened long while the Chargers sat.

“We all saw in the first half that they jumped over those burglars,” Higgins said. “Joe saw it. He gave me the signal on that play and the rest is history.”

Chase thought they would make history when they put the ball back with 1:26 left in the timed game. When he scored to tie the score, “I thought we were going to win.”

Had they come back and won, it would have been their biggest comeback victory: a 21-point deficit, last achieved on Christmas Eve 1995 against the Eagles. The other was the legendary 1981 opener against Seattle, when backup quarterback Turk Schonert came off the bench and led a victory that led to the first AFC title.

Chase also scored on a fourth down. His first came on an absolutely necessary four-yard slant on fourth-and-goal for their first touchdown of the night about ten minutes into the second half, making it 23-13.

The flow of the game played out over the Bengals’ first two red zone outings, with the NFL’s second-best red zone offense scoring touchdowns inside 20 against the NFL’s second-best red zone defense which prevented the same.

The Chargers defense won as they allowed two field goals

The Bengals nosed into the 20 on Burrow’s 32-yard flip to Chase in space cutting up the middle as he surpassed 1,000 yards for the fourth time in his four-year career.

But the Bengals, who came into the game with the fewest penalties in the league, were plagued by it all night, committing two here when tight end Tanner Hudson was called to an illegal shift and Burrow was called for intentional grounding. Evan McPherson was called on to hit a 26-yarder to give them a 3–0 lead.

On the next series, the Bengals used two big plays from another wide receiver to get into the red. This time it was Higgins, who split the middle for 20 yards and then converted a fourth-and-1 on an eight-yard slant.

But facing a third-and-2 from the nine, Burrow couldn’t connect with rookie wide receiver Jermaine Burton in the end zone and McPherson hit another chip shot to cut the Chargers’ lead to 7-6.