Bengals Defense Costs Team a Victory and Robs Joe Flacco of Something Even More Precious and Lasting

CINCINNATI – The Cincinnati Bengals did not record a turnover Sunday, but thievery still took place.

And it was damn near criminal.

It’s one thing for a defense to be so feckless that not even 495 yards and 42 yards by the offense are enough to win a game.

We’ve seen those types of losses in these parts.

A lot.

But Sunday’s 47-42 loss to the Chicago Bears at Paycor Stadium went way beyond the league’s worst defense costing the Bengals another win.

It robbed Joe Flacco of the kind of legend status that could have vaulted him into local conversations decades into the future the way Michael Jordan’s flu game, Kerri Strug’s Olympic vault and Willis Reed are revered nationally.

“He could barely lift his arm this week,” Bengals head coach Zac Taylor said of Flacco, who suffered an AC joint injury to his throwing shoulder last Sunday and barely practiced this week, including the standard pregame warmups a couple of hours before the game.

“You should see his freaking AC. It’s crazy,” center Ted Karras marveled.

“I mean, I wasn’t throwing without a little help,” admitted Flacco, who threw for a career-high 470 yards and four touchdowns while willing the Bengals to overcome a 14-point deficit with less than two minutes to play.

Flacco had never had a 400-yard game before.

Yet with a marginally functional right shoulder, he shook off three sacks and another two quarterback sacks and kept firing passes as the efficacy of the pain meds waned.

He threw it 47 times, completing 31, and they weren’t of the dink and dunk variety.

He threw perfectly placed go balls to Tee Higgins (44-yard touchdown), Mitchell Tinsley (27 yards down to the 2) and Andrei Iosivas (28 yards).

There was a deep out to Tanner Hudson for 29 yards and a 23-yard seam rip to Noah Fant for a touchdown.

Most quarterbacks dream for that kind of accurate performance when healthy.

Flacco did it with a comprised throwing shoulder.

“What Joe Flacco did us today, you’ll never forget,” Taylor said.

Flacco’s 9-yard touchdown pass to Iosivas – who was robbed of his own crowning moment after overcoming a couple of weeks of drops and social media hate that had rocked him – and Evan McPherson’s go-ahead extra point with 54 seconds left should be playing on loop on phones, tablets and TVs across the city for days to come.

The Bengals needed just 54 quality seconds from their defense.

It was too much to ask.

They gave up a 72 yards in four plays and tried to bump Bears tight end rookie tight end Colston Loveland to the ground instead of tackling him on his game-winning 58-yard catch and run with 17 seconds left.

“One f—king stop,” Bengals wide receiver Ja’Marr Chase yelled while walking into the locker room after the loss.

“Finish the f—king game,” frustrated Bengals running back Chase Brown added.

The worst tackling team in the league – by a long shot, with 84 missed attemps coming into game, 21 more than the next feeblest – spent the week focusing on improving that element of their dysfunction.

And then the group went out and missed 15 more that led to an extra 133 yards for the Bears, per Next Gen Stats.

And yet for as horrible as the Bengals defense was for 59 minutes, Flacco and his compromised right shoulder overcame it to deliver what people should be debating as one of the most memorable victories in franchise history.

And certainly one of the most heroic individual performances.

Instead, when the topic of Flacco’s 470-yard gut check is referenced in the future, most responses won’t revolve around the comeback, or the pain he played through, or the pinpoint placement of so many passes, or the four touchdowns.

It will be something along the lines of, “Was that the fourth game they lost when scoring at least 33 points, or the fifth.”

It was the fifth, by the way … in the last 24 games.

“I just can’t believe it. Can’t believe,” Taylor said to open his postgame news conference. “The game was right there, and all we have to do is make one play.

“It’s sick.”

Taylor was praising Flacco days ago for even trying to play through that kind of pain for a group of teammates he’s known for less than a month.

He proved he could make some throws on Thursday and basically shut it down until Sunday at 1 p.m.

Then he went out and not just played, but performed like that.

“I’m lucky,” he said. “I’ve played a lot of games, so I didn’t feel like I had to go out there and get a ton of practice reps. It’s going to be tough to practice. As long as I know that I can through Sundays, then I feel good about it.”

But for how long.

How many times can you put your health on the line and watch the defense squander everything you worked for, and through, and think to yourself at age 40, “Yeah, I want more of that.”

The Bengals defense stole a win from the team and the city.

But it robbed Flacco of something even more precious and lasting.