A Super Chance Slips Away

And they're not easy to come by

Only one team gets to speak after a championship game.

The players who win have lots to say and the adrenaline to say it. That explains why Kansas City tight end Travis Kelce used his two seconds of postgame national TV time to say, “Burrowhead, my ass.’’ Not exactly classy or smooth, but point taken.

A season ending too soon sounds like Sunday morning in church, when the preacher asks for bowed heads. The Bengals were all but convinced they would be playing football again in two weeks. Their fans felt the same. Feelgood covered the town like sunshine in May.

And then Joseph Ossai, bless him, forearmed Patrick Mahomes into the bench on the last play from scrimmage. Mahomes had scrambled for a first down that by itself might have proven inconsequential. Given 15 more free yards, the Chiefs made the best of things.

Bless Ossai, a good player who will get better. He was adrenalized and living squarely in the moment. In a game like the one we witnessed Sunday night, no one play decides things, unless it’s the last play. Harrison Butker’s 45-yard field goal was the last play.

Chiefs 23, Bengals 20 was a beautiful football game. That’s a tough sell around here now and perhaps forever. But watching Mahomes play on one leg with one bona fide wide receiver — and somehow make it all work — was entirely remarkable. Because on the face of it, the Chiefs shouldn’t have had a chance.

Mahomes ran like he was on a crooked floor. He lost three wideouts in the game. KC played four rookies on defense. Seemingly, the Chiefs only had one pass rusher, certainly not sufficient to stifle Joe Burrow. Yet there Chris Jones was, maligning Burrow, play after play.

I thought that after Burrow led the Bengals field goal drive to end the 1st half, then followed that up with a 14-yard TD pass to Tee Higgins to open the next half, the Bengals would win. All Burrow needed was another couple-tenths of a second each time he dropped back, and that was exactly what he got.

Mister Inevitable was in the house and he was groovin’. It was 13-13 at that point. The Bengals were winning.

What we didn’t count on, because we haven’t witnessed it for months, was the QB on the other side being just as inevitable, even as he hobbled for three hours like he’d just stubbed his toe. Mahomes had something to say about Saint Joe’s inevitability.

Mahomes, who will be the Most Valuable Player in the league, was less than magnificent in every respect but one: His refusal to lose. You saw it on that last, decisive play, when he ran right, knew he was gonna get clobbered, yet stayed inbounds until he’d made the 1st down. Then Ossai clobbered him, illegally.

The Bengals never seem to do anything normally when they’re on the huge stage. Sunday wasn’t as bizarre as Burfict-Pacman-2015, but it was in the photo. There was enough peripheral weirdness to keep us sighing for years. I still don’t really understand why the Chiefs got two cracks on 3rd down late in the 4th, or why Burrow was called for intentional grounding when Samaje Perine was five yards from the thrown ball.

Them’s the breaks. And truthfully, if you look at the entirety of this season (and last), you’ll notice that fortune was good to the Bengals more often than not.

There were no coaching-decision hiccups Sunday, no game-planning you could point to as egregious. The Bengals had the better, healthier team and didn’t win. Credit to the Chiefs, who were courageous and unflinching.

No one here wants to hear about what a rivalry this could be for the next decade. No one’s interested in that until the wound heals and who knows when it will. Maybe never. It’s just so hard to get to the summit, isn’t it? It’s not as if the Bengals can pick up next summer right where they left off Sunday night. They have to start at base camp.

Their future seems luminous, but in the NFL, one never knows. All that’s certain is the next play. The Bengals were the better team and they lost the game. It’ll stick with them awhile. It’ll stick with all of us.