The Cincinnati Bengals entered Monday night’s game against the Jacksonville Jaguars with Jake Browning under center, as Joe Burrow is out for the season due to an injury. Browning, a veteran backup in the league, had never started until Burrow went down, but looked rather comfortable going up against the Jacksonville Jaguars on the road.
This is what makes the fact that the team had Tyler Boyd, who is a wide receiver, throw a pass all the more insane. While Boyd had thrown five passes over his NFL career coming into Monday night, he had never thrown an interception. But his sixth pass, which came on a first-and-10 in the third quarter with the ball deep in Bengals territory, was destined to fail from the jump. Here’s what happened.
I think the idea here was to have Browning throw it back to Boyd, who then threw to Ja’Marr Chase down the field. That didn’t happen, while the Jags made it a point to take out Browning, which took away any chance for Boyd to throw the back to him. It appears that Boyd then noticed that Joe Mixon had blockers and a ton of space, so he attempted to get it over to him, but Boyd threw it on a rope instead of lofting it over Josh Allen, which meant that Allen had one of the easiest picks of his career. And a few plays later, Trevor Lawrence was able to make Cincinnati pay by reaching into the end zone for a touchdown.
