The Bengals tried to take a little weight off of Jake Browning a couple of times by deploying some trickery in the quarterback’s second NFL start on Monday, but neither play unfolded like they hoped.
A pass from wide receiver Ja’Marr Chase back to Browning lost seven yards in the first half and a third-quarter try with wide receiver Tyler Boyd had even worse results. Boyd appeared to hold the ball longer than he was supposed to after getting the ball on a reverse and then threw the ball right to Jaguars edge rusher Josh Allen to give the Jags the ball inside the Cincinnati 10-yard-line.
Jaguars quarterback Trevor Lawrence scored on a one-yard-run on fourth down to break a 21-21 tie and Bengals head coach Zac Taylor said after the game that “it’s a play we’ve had explosive plays on several times over the years.”
“It’s tough when your receiver’s not used to throwing the ball, took a little longer than we normally anticipate,” Taylor said. “That’s just part of making a call like that. You gotta live with that. He doesn’t practice quarterback, he doesn’t go through every situation. We usually — when we call that play in practice, we give a pretty vanilla look, pretty easy look to get the rep. It was a little tougher than anticipated and Josh made a good play.”
Taylor said that the play “could have broken our back” while praising the team for bouncing back after the sudden change deep in their own end. He would have faced a lot more scrutiny if that rebound had not ended with Evan McPherson’s field goal making them 34-31 winners.