It just so happened that as the Bengals were making their way off the field in Denver, with a rugged 15–10 win coming back with them to Ohio, Packers punter Corey Bojorquez was lined up in his own end zone to punt the ball back to a hobbled Ravens team and give Baltimore a shot at one more miracle win.
It was about 7:17 p.m. ET, the Ravens were down seven and the AFC North race was, again, on.
But neither the Bengals’ coach nor quarterback knew it yet. Nor, for the moment, did they care to.
It could wait.
“No, I knew zero—,” said coach Zac Taylor, over his cell from the airport, as the Bengals boarded their charter. “That stuff matters if it’s Week 18 and there’s a playoff bid on the line, but we were concerned with us. We’ve always been focused on us. We’re aware of at the end of the day what’s going on around the division, but certainly not in that moment. We were cherishing that victory on the road against a really good football team.”
“I don’t think it really matters too much what happened this week in that game,” Joe Burrow added. “It’s all going to come down to these last two division games for us.”
Taylor wound up getting the Ravens/Packers score from a reporter at his postgame press conference. Burrow didn’t see it until he checked his phone coming out of the shower. And what they found out the rest of us did was this: The race in their division had just pulled even tighter than it was before.
Long story short, Bojorquez’s sideways kick gave the Ravens possession at the Packers’ 49 to start their game-winning bid. From there, backup quarterback Tyler Huntley keyed a seven-play, 49-yard drive, with a scramble and two throws to Mark Andrews picking up first downs, to set the stage for Huntley’s eight-yard run to make it 31–30. And , John Harbaugh eschewed the chance to force overtime for a shot to win.
On the two-conversion attempt, Huntley rolled toward Andrews, who was covered by Eric Stokes by the front right pylon. As he let go of the throw, safety Darnell Savage Jr. drove on the ball and just got his fingertips there in time to make the ball flutter past Andrews and propel the Packers to a one-point win.
It dropped the Ravens to 8–6 and moved the Bengals into a first-place tie with them. Meanwhile, the Steelers won too, and that puts Pittsburgh, at 7-6-1, a half game back of Baltimore and Cincinnati. The Browns are 7–6, play the Raiders Monday night and will wake up Tuesday morning either in first or in last.
That leaves all four teams within a half game of each other going into the final stages of Week 15, which is great for all of us on the outside.
And for those on the inside like Taylor and Burrow? The blinders come off this week.
For good reason, too.
