Bengals-Chargers was an exciting mess of a Sunday night

There’s nothing like an exciting Sunday night football game. After a day of sitting on the couch with RedZone, it’s a nice, healthy step down to sit back and enjoy just one game in the moment. If that game delivers, then all the better. There have been some fun ones this season, even as recently as last weekend with the Jared Goff interceptionpalooza. But for my money, Sunday’s matchup between the Chargers and Bengals was the best Sunday night of the season. Both teams, at different times and sometimes at the same time, looked like they were trying to give the game away; this somehow only made the game itself more compelling. A game of gun incompetence might not sound like riveting displays, but both teams traded periods of dominance across 60 minutes, and the only reason why The Chargers led 34-27 is that they choked a little less last quarter.

If you want to be more generous than that, the Chargers won because they executed one more run than the Bengals did in the fourth, but that would ignore how Los Angeles built a comfortable 27-6 lead on Justin Herbert’s arm, only to suddenly and completely forget how to play defense. Let’s start with Herbert, though, because he was completely fit in the first half. Herbert completed his first six passes of the night for 123 yards and two TDs, the first of which was a beautiful laser down the seam to tight end Will Dissly. The second was even better as Herbert took a wide shot just before swinging left and leaving his feet for a bullet to a wide open Quentin Johnson in the end zone:

On the next drive, JK Dobbins converted on a fourth-and-goal from the oneand a field goal at the end of the half made it 24–6 Chargers. At this point it seemed to be headed for a blowout in the direction of e.g. 37-15 Steelers/Jets Sunday night from Week 7; that is, the bad kind of Sunday game where every possession speaks of going to bed early. So all the more credit to the Bengals for, ahem, roaring back. After the Chargers opened the third with a field goal, Joe Burrow and co. came to work. On the team’s third trip into the red zone – the previous two ended in field goals by Evan McPherson; more on him in a bit – the Bengals finally got into the end zone thanks to a poor defensive play by the Chargers. On fourth-and-goal from the four, the Chargers went heavy, leaving JaMarr Chase one-on-one with rookie corner Cam Hart to the left. Burrow saw it and hit his no. 1 recipient in stride to make it 27-13.

After Herbert took a painful sack on the third down of the next drive, the Bengals got the ball back and struck hard and fast: On fourth-and-2 from the 42, Tee Higgins hit a beautiful double move in and out down the seam, and Burrow might have the easiest touchdown pass of his season to his wide open receiver. Now it was 27-20. You can see where this is going and so could anyone watching.

However, let’s return to Herbert for a moment. While not what anyone would consider a Running Quarterback, Herbert has shown the ability to escape the pocket to rack up yards on the ground, and he did it twice in first half to keep drives going for the Chargers. Maybe that success put a bit too much of a dent in his chip, or maybe it was just bad luck, but Herbert opened the fourth quarter with another nice run, only to fumble when he was hit by Logan Wilson, giving the Bengals the ball back with a score and plenty of time left. They didn’t need much time, however, as a quick seven-play drive ended with another Chase touchdown, guided quite nicely by Burrow. And just like that, in about a quarter of a game, a 27-6 lead turned into a 27-27 deadlock.

Now, I mentioned McPherson, who hit his first two field goals of the night from 26 and 27 yards. Unfortunately for him, the Bengals kicker appeared to catch the kicker flu that is making the rounds in the NFL, the same one that led to Eagles kicker Jake Elliot returning three kicks Thursday night. McPherson followed suit twice on Sunday. First, with 7:35 left in the fourth, he narrowly hooked a 48-yarder from the left hashwhich is fine and happens to the best kickers. Less excusable, however, was his kick with 1:52 left. While a 51-yarder isn’t a chip shot by any stretch of the imagination, the Bengals put the ball up on right hash to McPherson, and he nevertheless still managed to hook quite the screaming left, leaving the score tied at 27-27 at the two-minute warning.

The Chargers hadn’t gotten all the second-half slam out of their cleats, though, and went three-and-out in quick fashion to give the Bengals the ball back with 1:34 left. Cincinnati got a first down, then followed it up with three incomplete passes and gave the ball back again. A nice punt put LA back at its own 14-yard line with 45 seconds left and two timeouts. This is where I have to mention Ladd McConkey, the freshman wide receiver from Georgia with the incredible name. McConkey had himself a night on Sunday, finishing with six catches for 123 yards, none more than the two he had on the final drive. On the first play of that drive from the 14th, Herbert spotted McConkey in one-on-one coverage on the right side; McConkey is listed at a generous-looking six feet and isn’t very powerful, but he went up and beat Mike Hilton for the ball, moving the Chargers to their own 45-yard line with 35 seconds left.

Two plays later, Herbert found McConkey wide open on the other side of the field and took the ball down to the Bengals’ 29. Somehow, it only took 19 seconds, and with 26 seconds left and already in field goal range, the Chargers could have tried to set up a game-winning field goal and called it a night. No one told Dobbins, though, and the former Ravens running back went wide behind a pulling guard, beat Bengals cornerback Cam Taylor-Britt and dove into the end zone to give the Chargers a 34- 27 with only 18 seconds to go.

(To Dobbins’ credit, I hate it when players go down the one-yard line to kill more clock, and with the way the kick has gone this year, I don’t respect leaving the game to just a chip-shot attempt from the one.)

Of course, it wasn’t game over; this game was not that simple. Burrow found Andrei Iosivas open down the middle of the field on the first play of the next drive, moving Cincy to the Chargers 43 with 10 seconds left. After a failed attempt to get a piece of yards through Chase on the right sideline, Burrow then threw the ball into the end zone as time expired. Higgins actually came pretty close to catching it — whether or not he would have been in the end zone after the touchdown is a question I can’t answer — but Chargers safety Derwin James arrived just in time to break up the pass and seal the win for the hosts.

Whew, that was a lot! Kudos to the NFL’s schedule constructors, who put together two teams with a long and not-so-proud history of collapsing into a weekend capper. While the Chargers, now 7-3, might look to the defensive tape from the third quarter to prevent another 21-point comeback, the Bengals, who fell to 4-7 on the season, will lament that its first-half red zone trips ended only in field goals, or that McPherson decided to cosplay me on the golf course in the game’s two biggest kicks in the fourth. Regardless of what these teams focus on this coming week, I’m glad they stumbled back and forth through what ended up being an extremely fun, if a little silly, Sunday night. That’s the most I can ask for from the time on any given Sunday.