The Bengals came into the game expressing a lot of confidence in the ability of their offensive line to hold up against the Rams pass rush and they only allowed one sack through the first two quarters of Super Bowl LVI.
The dam burst in the second half, however. The Rams sacked Joe Burrow six times during the second half, which left them tied for a Super Bowl record with seven overall sacks, and that stopped their offense short after they moved into the lead on a Tee Higgins 75-yard touchdown on the first play of the third quarter. Cornerback Chidobe Awuzie intercepted Matthew Stafford’s next pass in Rams territory, but two Aaron Donald sacks forced the Bengals to settle for a field goal and the Rams scored the final 10 points of the game for a 23-20 win.
Donald came up big again on the final Bengals offensive play by pressuring Burrow into an incompletion and Bengals head coach Zac Taylor said after the game that things got “difficult” up front after a “tremendous” first half on the protection front. Taylor didn’t say the offensive line was solely to blame and that the team would “go back through it” to figure out what went wrong.
Taylor also said the Rams have “the best front in all of football” and that proved to be a major difference maker when all was said and done at SoFi Stadium on Sunday night.
