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Joseph Ossai’s sack of Patrick Mahomes was one of many key performs within the Bengals’ 27-24 win over the Chiefs again in Week 13. The play was one in all a number of vital ones all through the season for Ossai, a second-year linebacker whose complete rookie season was worn out by a knee harm sustained within the preseason.
Unfortunately for Ossai, his most consequential play of the 2022 season was one he’d quite overlook. It got here on his late shove of Mahomes within the waning seconds of the AFC title sport that allowed the Chiefs to get in place to kick the game-winning area objective. Inconsolable on the bench after the sport, Ossai finally made his means into the Bengals locker room, the place he obtained appreciable assist from his equally crestfallen teammates.
“Means the world to me,” Ossai stated of his teammates’ assist, through NFL Media. “These guys imply quite a bit to me. We come every single day and we work exhausting for one another. To know that they’ve my again is giving me peace proper now, for certain.”
When requested concerning the play after the sport, Bengals coach Zac Taylor stated that one play didn’t decide the result. Taylor was proper. The Bengals’ injured offensive line, which wilted late after considerably holding its personal in the course of the center parts of the sport, was the largest motive why the Bengals got here up simply in need of efficiently defending their AFC title. Suspect officiating and Mahomes’ wizardry whereas coping with his ankle harm additionally contributed to the Chiefs lastly beating the Bengals whereas exercising the demons of final 12 months’s AFC title sport loss to Cincinnati.
Bengals defensive sort out B.J. Novak stood guard as reporters requested Ossai questions.
When the ache of Sunday’s loss begins to subside, Ossai and the Bengals will certainly take one thing optimistic out of what they had been capable of obtain in the course of the 2022 season. While the season didn’t finish with a return journey to the Super Bowl, the Bengals had been capable of win back-to-back AFC North titles for the primary time in franchise historical past. They then defeated the Ravens and Bills within the playoffs whereas reinforcing their place as one of many NFL’s premier groups.
“We’ll come again, have an important offseason, get higher as group, get higher individually, and get again subsequent 12 months able to go,” Bengals quarterback Joe Burrow stated after the loss, through CLNS Media. “There’s not one man in that locker room that I haven’t got a whole lot of emotions for or actually look after. They all know that. … I feel (the group’s closeness is) why we have been within the positions that we’re in.”
