We have a pretty good idea that neither the Baltimore Ravens nor Cincinnati Bengals are going to the Super Bowl, if only because they're both far too fun to survive the difficult December/January gauntlet of bad-weather games and injuries that help make football the cruel and brutal slog it is. We definitely know they won't be playing each other in the Super Bowl because someone foolishly shoved them into the same conference 54 years ago. That’s a particularly egregious example of long-term vision impairment, but it also is what it is.
But also this is where Roger Goodell, the ginger banker who minds the money for the 31 descendants of Scrooge McDuck who run the NFL, could deliver a bold new idea that, if he sells it right, will land well with everyone in our fractured and shattered land. Namely, he could see to it that the Ravens and Bengals somehow are planted in the Super Bowl anyway, either by public fiat or quiet connivance. Given that we as a nation will clearly buy anything we're told and nod in stupefaction, even a middling Svengali like Goodell could carry this off.
The reason why he should do this, of course, is what you may have seen on Thursday night if you pirated your parents' Amazon Prime streaming password while they were watching Kathy Bates be the updated 76-year-old version of Matlock that Andy Griffith quit at age 66. It was a game of purest offensive hilarity, spectacular physical feats, and unabashedly defense-free sport—all the things people claim to want from sports when we don't have a fan-based or gambling-fueled bias. For example, if you bet the under last night, which had jumped from 47.5 to 53 from the outlaw line to opening kick, you lost that bet by two and a half touchdowns. You would have deserved it, too.
The Ravens have now won both their games against the Bengals this year, by an aggregate score of 76-72. Cincinnati quarterback Joe Burrow's two-game stat line is 64 completions in 95 throws for 820 yards, with nine touchdowns and one interception; he's 0-2 in those games. Baltimore quarterback Lamar Jackson scrambled backwards for 30 yards on one play and then gained all of it back plus the 10 yards he needed for the first down that set up their second touchdown, and that was the game’s most amazing play for less than eight minutes. It was surpassed when Ravens receiver Tylan Wallace tightroped 50 yards down the sideline to complete an 84-yard touchdown that would have tied the game if Justin Tucker's kicking leg hadn't become a pudding cup with a shin.
And none of those players were as amazing as Cincinnati's Ja'Marr Chase, who caught 11 balls for 264 yards and three touchdowns, with seven of those catches, 212 of those yards, and all three of those touchdowns coming in the second half. The last of those was what seemed like a game-tying touchdown with 38 seconds remaining, but that score failed to tie the game because the Bengals didn't convert the tactically defensible but still ill-advised two-point conversion that would have given a weary nation an extra 10 minutes, give or take, of the best football any of us could sign up for. It would have been nice to have 10 more minutes in which not to think about the fact that we all live in late-model Hungary, but it seems churlish to complain given everything that came before. And that failed conversion inspired Burrow to complain about the officials never giving him a break, which is a nice little bonus in itself.
It was a game that filled out the whole bingo card, and it somehow happened on Amazon, whose games are usually the NFL's schedule graveyard. No matter what your view of football is (except of course for those of you who see that the whole sport is simply a long-term retirement plan for America's neurosurgeons), two games with a total of 1,821 yards (457 by Chase alone), 20 touchdowns, 148 points, and only three field-goal attempts is a good return, and if Cincinnati coach Zac Taylor had settled for the game-tying extra point last night, both games would have gone into overtime.
Now who needs Patrick Mahomes and Jared Goff when you have all this? Who would want them if the alternative is this?
Do we get what we want, though? No, we do not. The Bengals are 4-6, and may not even make the playoffs. The Ravens lost defensive wizard Kyle Hamilton during the game and may be without him for several weeks if not longer. The Chiefs never lose, and the Ravens already have losses to the Browns and Raiders to remind us of their own vulnerabilities. And though there is no statement from the league, there is no indication that conference realignment is on the owners' agenda between now and the start of the postseason, a potential area for growth that college football has been mining successfully for a decade now.
And so the matchup that America, or the parts of it outside the I-70 strip, didn't know it needed until now cannot happen again in the game that all (well, two-fifths) of America gathers to watch. Hell, the Bengals are barely ahead of the Jets and looking up at the Colts, which provides even less solace for those who just witnessed the football we could all use in these preposterous times, and would like to see it again. Unless the league wants to get heavy (or heavier, depending upon the fit of your tinfoil hat) into changing the playoff format or out-and-out game-fixing, the best football game anyone could possibly want almost surely won't happen until next year. Hardly seems worth getting out of bed, doesn’t it? Then again, other than watching Kathy Bates work legal miracles in an hour, what does?
