He lay there in pain and frustration, before momentarily sitting up and then melting back down again and bringing his hands to his head in a brief show of despair.
His left toe, it turns out, had been hyperextended – in football parlance it’s called “turf toe” – and the injury often comes with stabbing pain and can be serious. If surgery is required – and ESPN’s Adam Schefter reported Monday morning it is it – a player can be out at least three months.
No one in the once-loud Paycor crowd of 65,871 knew all this at the moment. Everyone just sat in stunned silence as their quarterback, their season, their dreams of another Super Bowl trip, lay flat on the ground.
From the sidelines, Bengals’ backup quarterback Jake Browning, who hadn’t thrown an NFL pass in a game that counts in 20 months, came trotting in in relief.
Credit: AP
Credit: AP
By late in the game, he had thrown three interceptions and Cincinnati trailed 27-24.
After that third pick, hundreds of Bengals fans could be seen exiting the stadium.
Afterward, Cincinnati coach Zac Taylor said he didn’t blame them.
Across the field Jacksonville coach Liam Coen must have been so confident Browning wouldn’t rally the Bengals that he called a pair of risky plays that didn’t work.
Amidst that swirl of doubt, despair and Jaguar dismissal, what did Browning have to bank on when he came in one last time, with 3:42 left in the game, and the ball on his own eight yard line?
What was his mindset?
“Be delusional,” he said. “I think I had thrown three picks, but I was like ‘Somehow we still have a chance to win the game!’ It sounds bad, but you can’t be afraid to throw the fourth (interception) in that situation because you have a chance to win.”
Browning used that word – “delusional” – a couple of times after the game in which he had done the unimaginable. On that final drive, he suddenly became almost perfect.
He completed 9 of his last 11 passes – twice converting fourth down situations deep in his own territory – and won the game when he leaped across a scrum of bodies on a quarterback sneak from one yard out with 18 seconds left.
With the addition of an Evan McPherson point after, Cincinnati had the 31-27 victory and their first 2-0 start of a season in seven years.
Credit: AP
Credit: AP
If you look it up, the dictionary says delusional is “believing something that cannot possibly be true.”
These days you hear of people who believe their microwave is controlling their thoughts or their dog is mind melding with them.
From the 15th to the 19th centuries in Europe, there was a common delusion, as bizarre as it sounds, where many people thought their body was made of glass.
King Charles VI was so convinced, he wore clothing reinforced with rods and wouldn’t allow people to get close to him for fear they’d bump him and he’d shatter. He slept wrapped in blankets.
Come to think of it, the Bengals ought to modify some of that treatment for Burrow, who so often in his career has been battered and most recently missed half of the 2023 season with a wrist injury.
Instead of reinforced clothes, they could just get him enough line protection to keep him from becoming a pinata in the backfield.
When he was hurt Sunday, that was his second sack of the day. Last Sunday the Browns sacked him three times. In years previous, he’s been one of the most sacked quarterbacks in the NFL.
One other delusion story from a century past involved a Greek military officer, George Hatzianestis, who believed his legs were made of glass and would shatter if he moved too strenuously.
During the Greek-Turkish War of 1922 he refused to move his troops and that turned the war in the Turks favor.
Hatzianestis was tried for treason and executed.
Thankfully, Browning was at the other end of the delusional spectrum.
‘He’s a starter in this league’
Taylor doesn’t claim to be a psychiatrist, but he said as that final drive was being played out he never focused on sending McPherson in to kick the game-tying field goal before Browning had a chance to throw a fourth pick:
“I never gave Jake a field goal landmark because that really was not our mentality. Our mentality was, ‘We’re going to go score and win the game.’”
Taylor’s confidence – shared by several of the Bengals veteran players – was due to a few factors.
First, they’ve seen Browning carry the team before. In 2023, he went 4-3 as a starter and had delivered an unexpected KO punch to these same Jaguars in that span.
In that December 4 road game, he completed 32 of 37 passes for 354 yards and a 76-yard touchdown pass to Ja’Marr Chase to lead Cincinnati to a 34-31 win in overtime.
Speaking of Chase, he’s Browning’s favorite target.
“He’s the best receiver in the NFL,” the quarterback said after Sunday’s game when Chase had 14 receptions for 165 yards and a four-yard TD catch.
With Tee Higgins and now Mitchell Tinsley, a highlight reel receiver who made a one-handed TD catch of a Browning pass – it was his first NFL reception – the team has an abundance of game-changing talents that can fortify any backup quarterback.
But make no mistake, Browning isn’t just any backup.
As center Ted Karras put it afterwards: “It’s pretty obvious, he’s a starter in this league (if he were somewhere else.)”
Taylor said he and the team believe in Browning because of the way he prepares. The coach claimed he saw him in the facility at 8:30 on Sunday morning.
He said Browning continually works at his craft because he knows the other side of an NFL opportunity and how easy it can be to move the other way and be back on a practice squad or worse, out of the league.
Browning talked about the tough times he’s faced in his career.
He went undrafted coming out of Washington and was picked up as a free agent by Minnesota. He spent his first four years in the league – two with the Vikings and two in Cincinnati – as a practice squad player who was cut and re-signed five times.
By 2021 he thought he was out of the NFL and planned to become a coach.
This was a far cry from his early years as a quarterback.
Credit: AP
Credit: AP
He remains one of the most celebrated high school quarterbacks in history. His senior year in Folsom, California, he was named the Gatorade Player of the Year after throwing for 91 touchdowns and 5,790 yards!
He ended his prep career with national high school records: 16,776 career yards and 229 touchdowns. At Washington he set the program record with 12,296 passing yards and 94 TDs.
Although that’s several years and many levels away from Sunday, it’s likely that’s the place where his delusion took root.
‘Ready enough to win’
As he prepares now, he said: “I convince myself every Saturday that this will happen. And when it does it surprises everyone else, but not me.
“That’s my job as a back-up – be ready. My worst nightmare would be getting thrown out there and not being ready. I didn’t have my best game, but I was ready enough to win.”
He said when he’s thrown into the game as he was Sunday, “it creates an emotional jump and you try to ride that wave and operate.”
While there was joy in the dressing room Sunday, beneath it there was plenty of concern, especially when Burrow was seen in a walking boot and on crutches.
While someone afterward was trying to make the case that Browning had provided the silver-lining moment on this day, Karras shook his head: “There’s a lot of gray today too.”
Credit: AP
Credit: AP
He felt for Burrow who came back from the heartbreak of the 2023 to be the Comeback Player of the Year in 2024, win Pro Bowl honors and be a finalist for the league MVP.
No one wanted to speculate in public how badly Burrow was hurt or what this absence would mean to the team.
“We have 100 percent confidence,” Karras said. “We love Jake.”
Chase agreed: “We’ve been here before with Jake. We’ve all got to push him to be better…but we’ve got to let him be himself at the end of the day.”
And on this day, Browning said that meant just two things:
“I had to be delusional and aggressive because the moment called for it.”
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