Joe Burrow admits painful truth about Chiefs call that still haunts Bengals fans

Four plays later, Harrison Butker nailed a 51-yard field goal which consigned Cincinnati to its third-straight 0-2 start.

Bengals fans—and large groups of NFL fans in general—have been complaining about that call ever since, pointing to it as a clear case of the referees favoring Kansas City. But an unlikely source has taken away any leg Bengals fans have to stand on with that tired old argument—their very own quarterback.

On the sideline after the play, Burrow slammed his helmet in frustration. But later, he all but admitted it was the correct call.

“In these games, you have calls that go against you, you have calls that go your way. That’s part of football,” he said during episode two of Netflix’s show Quarterback. “And if it was me, I would have been upset if I didn’t get that pass interference call.”

There you have it.

While Burrow didn’t explicitly say it was the correct call (which of course, it was), he’s saying it without saying it. Why else would he be upset about not getting the a flag there if it wasn’t the correct call?

Of course, the Bengals would go on to miss out on a playoff spot by one game, and as a result, Cincinnati fans continue to point to that PI call—and later, Kansas City’s decision to rest their starters in Week 18 against Denver—as the moment they got “screwed over.”

Never mind that Cincinnati lost to an awful New England Patriots team, and ignore that they faltered in crucial games against the Chargers and Steelers too. No, it was the refs and the Chiefs that cheated and robbed the Bengals of the playoffs, right? Wrong.

The pass interference flag was clearly the right call. You know that, I know that, any football fan with half a clue about the game knows it too.

A tiger (or in this case, a Bengal) might never change its stripes. But Cincinnati fans, at long last, should finally change their opinions on this. A tiger (or in this case, a Bengal) might never change its stripes. But Cincinnati fans, at long last, should finally change their opinions on this.