Joe Burrow made just enough plays and the maligned Bengals defense stepped up and delivered a much-needed victory that gave Cincinnati some hope after a dismal start to the season.
Burrow scored on a career-long 47-yard run on the opening possession, and Chase Brown scored on a game-clinching 30-yard touchdown run one play after his fumble luckily rolled out of bounds in the fourth quarter of a 17-7 victory over the New York Giants on Sunday night.
“We really needed it,” Burrow said after the Bengals improved to 2-4.
“I don’t want to say we would have been out of it if we lost, but we’d be scratching and clawing for the rest of the year. We still really are but it was good to get a win. Great to see our defense step up like that. They’ve taken some heat the last couple of weeks. They played awesome tonight.”
Evan McPherson made a go-ahead 37-yard field goal in the third quarter after a botched snap and hold contributed to him missing a potential game-winning kick a week earlier.
Rookie Tyrone Tracy ran for a 1-yard touchdown for the Giants (2-4), who are winless at home in three games and have scored one touchdown. They failed to take advantage of a Bengals defense that came in ranked 31st in the league in scoring.
The Giants punted four times in the first half. In the second, they turned it over on downs twice and Greg Joseph missed two field goal attempts.
The high-scoring Bengals were coming off a heartbreaking 41-38 overtime loss to visiting Baltimore, their second defeat this season in which Burrow and the offense put up more than 30 points. McPherson’s missed kick contributed to the defeat, but the Bengals also could not stop the Ravens and Lamar Jackson.
This time, Cincinnati were led defensively by Trey Hendrickson, who had two sacks, and linebacker Germaine Pratt, who intercepted Daniel Jones near the goal line in the first quarter after former Giant B.J. Hill hit Jones while he was throwing.
“We just knew we had to come out and play our type of football,” Hill said. “We were better at it. We’re still not perfect, still got a long way to go, but we can build off this win.”
After Tracy’s TD run tied the game, the Bengals quickly re-took the lead as Burrow danced in the backfield to give himself time to find Ja’Marr Chase on a 33-yard pass to the Giants 37. McPherson converted his go-ahead field goal with 41 seconds left in the quarter.
New York had a chance to tie the game soon after, but Joseph missed a 47-yard attempt when the kick took a hard left as it neared the uprights.
The Giants had one more chance to tie it late in the fourth quarter, but a crossing pass to Darius Slayton was broken up by DJ Turner.
The Giants, who had not scored a touchdown in their first 10 quarters at home this season, finally found the end zone on Tracy’s 1-yard run with 5:48 left in the third quarter. It capped a 16-play, 79 drive that featured two fourth-down conversions by Tracy.
Burrow said of his 47-yard TD on third-and-18: “I saw an opening, saw it was man coverage. I was able to squeak through there and find the end zone.”
Burrow’s previous long run was 23 yards twice in a career that started in 2020.
Jones went 22 of 41 for 205 yards and he also led New York with 56 yards rushing on 11 carries. Burrow had similar numbers – 19 of 28 for 208 yards – but was good enough when it mattered.
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