Zac Taylor managed to do what no Cincinnati Bengals coach had done since Sam Wyche, and it definitely put him in a pretty good mood afterward.
Taylor led the Bengals to their first playoff victory since 1991 with a 26-19 win over the Las Vegas Raiders on Saturday. The game was shrouded in controversy, however, thanks to a blunder made by the officials late in the first half. An inadvertent whistle was blown in the middle of a third-down play in the red zone before Tyler Boyd caught a touchdown pass from Joe Burrow (video here). The officiating crew, led by Jerome Boger, totally ignored the rules and allowed the touchdown by the Bengals to stand.
After the game, Taylor had a rather interesting response to the controversy.
“I definitely, definitely never heard a whistle,” said Taylor, per Ben Baby of ESPN. “No way.”
Baby added it was a very tongue-in-cheek statement by Taylor.
By rule, the down should have been replayed after the inadvertent whistle, wiping the touchdown off the board. But Boger’s crew, perhaps attempting to make up for the whistle being blown in the first place, awarded Cincinnati the touchdown instead. The Bengals were in field-goal range at the time, so the decision benefited them by at least four points. As a result, when the Raiders got the ball back late in the fourth quarter, they had to go for a touchdown to tie instead of a field goal. Their efforts eventually fell short inside Cincinnati's 10-yard line, and the Bengals won.
Even Taylor seems to think that his team may have gotten away with one there. Regardless, the Bengals are moving on in the playoff bracket, so Taylor can afford to grin about it a little.
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