4-Down Territory: Mahomes’ ultimate game, Bengals’ future, best-on-best, Ossai’s recovery

Every week in “4-Down Territory,” Touchdown Wire’s Doug Farrar and Luke Easterling of Bucs Wire and Draft Wire go over the things you need to know about, and the things you need to watch, in the NFL right now. With the Conference Championship games in the rear-view, and Super Bowl LVII set with the Kansas City Chiefs and the Philadelphia Eagles, there’s a lot to talk about!

00:00 – Was this the most impressive game of Patrick Mahomes’ NFL career?

07:08 – What do the Cincinnati Bengals need to do to push this thing over the top next season?

11:07 – How does Patrick Mahomes overcome the Eagles’ amazing defense — specifically, their historically great pass rush?

15:05 – When you unfortunately have to wear the goat horns, how do you get over it, as Bengals edge-rusher Joseph Ossai must now do?

You can watch this week’s “4-Down Territory,” powered by KIA, right here:

Was this AFC Championship Patrick Mahomes' best NFL game?

(Syndication: The Enquirer)

In the Chiefs’ 23-20 AFC Championship win over the Bengals, Patrick Mahomes completed 29 of 43 passes for 326 yards, two touchdowns, no interceptions, and a passer rating of 105.4. And he did it against a defense that had had his number in each of the last three times these teams played. Moreover, he did it on an obviously injured right ankle, and down multiple receivers due to injury. We’ve seen all kinds of amazing things from Mahomes since he started terrorizing the NFL in 2018, but was this the most impressive game of Mahomes’ NFL career? 

Doug: I think it was. It’s certainly in the top two or three. In this spotlight, against a defensive coordinator in Lou Anarumo who had taken his  lunch money over and over, and down four receivers due to injury, Mahomes took the field (just barely), and you could see as the game went on that whatever he took to make his performance possible in the first place was wearing off. He was more and more hampered as things went along. And still, he got it done as he hadn’t before against this team. 

The most remarkable turnaround came in the second half. The Bengals had made Mahomes look like an undrafted free agent in the second halves and overtime in the three previous Chiefs losses: He completed 25 passes on 44 attempts for 503 yards, no touchdowns, two interceptions, and a passer rating of 54.5. In the second half of this game, with his body and his receiver corps falling apart, Mahomes completed 16 of 24 passes for 161 yards, a touchdown, no picks, and a passer rating of 99.5. Mahomes doesn’t have a lot of demons to exorcise in his career, but he certainly took care of a few on Sunday. 

Luke: Yeah, we’ve seen some otherworldly things from No. 15 already in his career, but this was so important. Just like you said, the recent history against the Bengals, the high stakes, the injuries (both his own and his teammates’)…he had every reason to fold and let Joe Burrow take another one from him in front of his own home crowd. Instead, he delivered the kind of gutsy performance we’ll be talking about for years to come, especially if the Chiefs go on to finish the job in Arizona.

How close are the Bengals to winning it all?

(Syndication: The Columbus Dispatch)

The Bengals have seen their last two seasons end with a three-point loss to the Rams in Super Bowl 56, and a three-point loss in this game. It’s like the Bengals of the 1980s, in which they lost two close Super Bowls to the Bill Walsh 49ers. Great teams, but they kept missing it by that much. What do the Bengals need to do to push this thing over the top next season? 

Doug: I honestly don’t think they need to do that much. Joe Burrow has been saying for months that the 2022 Bengals are a better team than the 2021 Bengals that made the Super Bowl, and he’s absolutely correct. They went from 17th to fifth in overall DVOA, 18th to fourth in Offensive DVOA, and 19th to 11th in Defensive DVOA. They were sporting a 10-game winning streak, and not a lot of flukes in there. Last season, this was a surprise. This season, we all expected the Bengals to be here. I would focus on the offensive line, because even with multiple additions last offseason, they can still upgrade. 

I would look specifically at left tackle Jonah Williams, who will be on the final year of his rookie contract next season. He allowed 13 sacks and 45 pressures in 2022 on 748 pass-blocking snaps. Maybe some reinforcements in the secondary as well. You wonder – had Chidobie Awuzie, their best cornerback, not been lost since Week 8 with a torn ACL, do we have a different result in this game? Other than that, a relatively healthy Bengals team should be expected to be right back in the hunt next season and beyond.

Oh. Maybe don’t ever single-team Chris Jones? Doing that seems like a bad idea. 

Luke: Yeah, I think it’s really just the offensive line. At full strength, I think the one they have might have been enough, but that’s where a lack of quality depth can bite you. This is still one of the best teams in the league on both sides of the ball, and I think perhaps their biggest concern might be if defensive coordinator Lou Anarumo gets a head coaching gig somewhere else this offseason.

Best offense vs. best defense?

(Bill Streicher-USA TODAY Sports)

This Super Bowl marks the third time in NFL history that the passing yards leader will take on the NFL’s No. 1 pass defense, at least by conventional metrics. The last two times did not go well at all for the prolific quarterbacks – the Seahawks beat the brakes off Peyton Manning and the Broncos in Super Bowl 48, and the Buccaneers vivisected Rich Gannon and the Raiders in Super Bowl 37. Now, we have Mahomes against the Eagles’ defense. How does Mahomes overcome this historical deficit when he takes the field against the Eagles? 

Doug: The matchup I’m most concerned about for the Chiefs is Philly’s ridiculous pass rush (especially Haason Reddick, who basically stole the deed to San Francisco in the NFC Championship game) against Kansas City offensive tackles Orlando Brown Jr. and Andrew Wylie, who have been vulnerable all season to pressure off the edge. That vulnerability has shown up especially against guys like Reddick, who can win on the back half of the arc to the pocket, and that is Brown’s Kryptonite in particular. If Mahomes can overcome that with pocket movement and second-reaction plays with however much he’s able to recover from the high ankle sprain over the next two weeks, things might be okay. Otherwise, we could be looking at a replay of Super Bowl 55, when the Buccaneers’ pass rush gave Kansas City’s explosive offense no chance to explode.

And speaking of bad blocking plans, the Chiefs should not try to block Reddick with tight ends and receivers, as the 49ers did. That was suboptimal for them.

Luke: I think Isiah Pacheco is going to be the key here. The Chiefs have GOT to run the ball consistently and effectively if they want to win this game. It’ll take pressure off Mahomes, set up some big plays down the field by luring the Eagles defense down into the box, and he can make big plays in the screen game to punish that aggressive pass rush, as well. Keeping Jalen Hurts and the Eagles off the field as much as possible, and not allowing them to dominate time of possession, will be critical. That’ll come down to the running game for KC.

How can Joseph Ossai recover from that one big mistake?

(Sam Greene-USA TODAY Sports)

The other big story in the AFC Championship game was of course Bengals edge-rusher Joseph Ossai, who pushed Mahomes when he was already out of bounds with seconds left in the game, and the subsequent 15-yard penalty put the Chiefs in position for Harrison Butker to kick the game-winning 45-yard field goal with eight seconds left. When you unfortunately have to wear the goat horns in a case like this, how do you get over it? 

Doug: It’s rough. You feel for the human being beyond the game. I will say that Ossai shares the goat horns with referee Ron Torbert and his crew, who missed at least one, and possibly two, holds on Chiefs offensive linemen on that very same play. Yes, there are rip move exemptions that may or may not have negated those holds, but do you trust any NFL official to correctly legislate that in the moment? The chances are good that Ossai’s penalty (which was legitimate) should have been offset. In that case, you’re breathing a sigh of relief and playing for overtime. But Ossai also had one of the best games of his young career – five tackles, a tackle for loss, two quarterback hits, and a pass defensed. The best thing Ossai can do is to focus on the good, use what happened as fuel for the future, and try to move on. 

The real key for the Bengals is to not let this ruin their future prospects. Because single plays like this can exact a heavy emotional toll. I was in the Seahawks’ locker room after Russell Wilson’s interception to Malcolm Butler in Super Bowl 49, and I was in the building a lot in the few years after that.  I don’t think that series of Seahawks teams ever recovered from it. You can’t let one bad play define your future, no matter how impossible that seems in the moment. 

Luke: I think one of the biggest things is what we already saw Sunday night, with his teammates immediately coming to his side and supporting him. Whether that was Cam Sample on the bench right after, or B.J. Hill in the locker room while Ossai bravely answered for his mistake to the media. This game is played by real human beings with feelings and emotions, who make mistakes just like the rest of us do every day.

The only difference is, our biggest mistakes don’t usually happen in a stadium filled with thousands of people, and they’re not broadcast to millions more live on TV. Kudos to Ossai’s teammates for picking him up in the moment, and I’m sure they will continue to do so throughout the offseason. That’s really the most important thing, and could end up galvanizing the locker room even further for a potential run again next season.

Story originally appeared on Touchdown Wire