‘Never in a million years’: How the Bengals wasted latest Burrow-Chase masterpiece

BALTIMORE — Ja'Marr Chase ran himself open across every blade of grass at M&T Bank Stadium. Each of his 11 receptions for 264 yards and three touchdowns elicited a louder cackle at the absurdity of the latest love letter to a game penned with his football soulmate.

Yet, standing at the postgame podium reflecting upon yet another batch of career highlights ending in heartbreaking defeat, Chase was finally stopped.

"It's crazy," he said after a 35-34 loss to the Ravens Thursday, then paused to consider what this season is becoming at an almost impossible 4-6. "I would never in a million years expect to play this well and ( Joe Burrow ) play this well and we still have a losing record."

Burrow threw for 428 yards and four touchdowns without an interception. He had no semblance of a running game and endured 13 quarterback hits, the third most in his career. He got hit in his head, his back, his facemask, early, late and on the run. He grimaced on the sideline at one point battling the pain, but still climbed the pocket into traffic to deliver a strike to Chase sprinting across the middle then watched him hit 20.86 mph, finding a gear no Ravens player on the field possessed.

He threw over the top of the defense for a stunning 70-yard touchdown when the entire stadium was still swaying from the ground-shattering reaction to the latest Lamar Jackson touchdown. Burrow was putting the finishing touches on a week where his leadership and intensity were willing the Bengals out of an early-season malaise, one connection to Chase at a time.

They were unstoppable.

"They are the best duo in the league right now and they show it every week," cornerback Mike Hilton said.

They are also 4-6. The impossible numbers don't stop there.

The Bengals are 0-5 in games decided by six points or fewer this year.

"This has been the story of our season," Burrow said.

-34 thriller: Takeaways

Over the last 10 years, teams with a 400-yard, four-touchdown, zero-interception day were 33-5-1. Teams with a receiver racking up at least 225 yards were 9-1. Chase just broke the record for most receiving yards against a team in a single season and the Bengals held a double-digit lead in the second half.

They have nothing to show for it.

"It's sickening that this has happened twice to us," head coach Zac Taylor said.

Circling the crowded, stunned visitors' locker room after the game, the inability to finish came up repeatedly. These shocking results featuring so much good but too many debilitating errors have shifted from outlier to the central theme.

Consider the multitude of mistakes in this one that changed the course of the game. Add them to the list of the season.

If ranking them on a level of egregiousness, nothing comes close to Chase Brown 's fumble.

Cincinnati held firm control of the game. They were leading, 21-7 and held the ball. Ravens fans just booed Jackson and the offense off the field following yet another punt forced by the Bengals' defense, which had quickly become the stunning storyline of the night. They'd forced five punts, four three-and-outs and only allowed seven points to the league's top-ranked offense.

Fumbling was the one thing they couldn't afford to do and when Marlon Humphrey stripped the ball out and Baltimore landed on it to take over at the 31-yard line, the game, tone and entire outlook of the game shifted.

"Every time you play them, it's a one-score game," Taylor said. "Whoever wins the turnover battle wins the game. That's what it came down to."

Eventually, Derrick Henry scored the first of four consecutive touchdown drives in the final 19 minutes and 12 seconds of game play.

"You felt a little bit of momentum," Chase said. "You felt the crowd."

They felt the Ravens snap out of it.

"I felt like when 'Marlo' had forced that fumble, that kind of woke us up," Jackson said. "I feel like we were asleep that whole first half — even though we scored once. We were pretty much flat throughout the game."

Say what you will about Joe Mixon during his time in Cincinnati, he might not have broken enough tackles to make everyone happy, but he didn't give it up. He only fumbled three times in his last six seasons and not once in the last two years.

Brown has now fumbled twice in the last five games. Coming out of Illinois, fumbling was an issue for him where he coughed it up five times his senior season. None had the ramifications of this one.

What came next was a series of mistakes all too familiar in a season of losing plays at winning time. It's easy enough to tip your hat to Jackson scurrying 58 yards to gain 10 and set up Henry's first touchdown. He's in line to win MVP for that reason.

Three missed tackles in space on Tylan Wallace , though? Cam Taylor-Britt , Logan Wilson and Geno Stone all couldn't get him down or out of bounds when it appeared each had pedestrian opportunities to do so. Instead, he sprinted 84 yards for a touchdown and the building erupted.

"Just lack of effort," Hilton said. "Lack of want-to. We didn't want to get the guy down. He didn't do anything special, he just broke tackles and scored."

You know who spoke up first, early and often about a perceived lack of effort? DJ Reader . Currently a Detroit Lion.

In a game where the Bengals had to have it on national television and a defense trying to prove to the league they aren't the liability they've been made out to be for a year and a half and we are talking about "effort" and "want-to" being issues?

Then you have Taylor-Britt adding a dropped interception to his missed tackle. He could have made the game-changing pick and started to change the narrative on his disappointing season. Instead, he dropped it.

Defensive coordinator Lou Anarumo desperately needs Taylor-Britt to be the guy, instead, he's played like just a guy.

After all of that, Burrow and Chase still almost pulled off the magic act. Instead, they were left to digest what's quickly become a season as inexplicable as it is frustrating.

Has a team ever had players in the thick of the conversation for MVP, Offensive Player of the Year and Defensive Player of the Year and finished with a losing record?

Never in a million years.

"Look at how we are playing, and then you look at Trey Hendrickson and how he is playing, yeah, it's a tough pill to swallow," Burrow said. "We had our opportunities, obviously. We know it's tough, and you feel like you're playing well enough to win, and you're not."

(Photo: Patrick Smith / )