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Two of the best young quarterbacks in the NFL will square off Sunday night as Joe Burrow and the Cincinnati Bengals travel to Los Angeles to face Justin Herbert and the Chargers.
After a rough start to the season, Cincinnati is working to right the ship. The Bengals have won three of their last five and nearly outdueled the Baltimore Ravens in an instant classic last weekend.
The Chargers, meanwhile, are riding high. Winners of four of their last five, Jim Harbaugh’s team has its sights set on a postseason berth.
Who will come out on top Sunday night under the lights? Stay with NBC News all long for the latest from Los Angeles.
Justin Herbert turns the ball over for the first time since the second week of the season two months ago and his fumble came at a bad time for his team. The Chargers are holding onto a 27-20 lead by their fingernails. The difference between the first and second halves could not be more stark.
With Ja’Marr Chase double-teamed by defensive backs on fourth-and-2, the Bengals take a chance and throw deep to the other side of the field — where Tee Higgins was wide open, with two Chargers scrambling to catch up.
Too late.
It’s a 42-yard touchdown connection and now this is anyone’s game again, with the Chargers’ lead trimmed to 27-20 with 2:53 left in the third quarter. Buckle up.
Justin Herbert had been mostly unbothered in the pocket tonight, with more than 3 seconds to pass per attempt, according to the NBC broadcast, but that changed on the most recent drive that ended in a Chargers punt. Huge stop for a Bengals team just trying to piece together as many positive plays as possible.
Did the Bengals read our last post about it being now-or-never to start their rally? You can feel the change in urgency from Cincinnati as the third quarter reaches the midway point. On their most recent drive, the Bengals took a deep shot on second down (incomplete), Burrow lofted a perfectly placed ball in the back of the end zone (Tee Higgins couldn’t hold on) and the ground game worked as it hasn’t all night.
But after the Chargers defense snuffed out multiple plays close to the goal line, it led to a fourth down and goal from the 5. You already know who Joe Burrow trusted with the ball. He connects with Ja’Marr Chase for a touchdown pass on a slant route, and the Chargers now lead 27-13.
Cameron Dicker hooks a 53-yard field goal inside the right uprights with room to spare and the Chargers lead now 27-6 with 10:29 left in the third quarter. If a Cincinnati comeback is in the works, it has to start soon.
The Bengals got the opening they wanted to start the second half: On the first drive of the third quarter, the Chargers went three-and-out. But Cincinnati could do nothing with its own drive, in fact going backward after three incompletions, including a drop by the usually outstanding Ja’Marr Chase.
Think about tonight as a litmus test: The NFL’s best scoring defense trying to stop one of the hottest offenses. So far, the Chargers have proven their league-leading average of only 13 points per game allowed has been no fluke.
A short field goal as time expired pushes Cincinnati’s deficit to 18 points. As the score indicates, this has been a one-sided first half, with the Chargers averaging 8.8 yards per play, almost exactly double the Bengals’ average.
The duel between top young quarterbacks also has gone the Chargers’ way, with Justin Herbert completing 10 of his 14 passes for 178 yards, to the 97 thrown by Joe Burrow.
The Chargers have won the rushing battle, 94-29, and have two penalties to Cincinnati’s five. Notice a trend? This has been all Chargers thus far.
Cincinnati kicker Evan McPherson is now 2-2 after making a 27-yard field goal. The drive lasted 11 plays and went 57 yards. Remember what we wrote pregame about the Bengals ranking among the NFL’s best at converting on third down? Well, tonight they’ve started just 1-of-5 in that department. Credit to the Chargers defense and first-year coordinator Jesse Minter.
Los Angeles has now scored touchdowns on three consecutive drives to take a 21-6 lead with 4:35 to go in the second quarter. This time, it was a JK Dobbins 1-yard touchdown run that ended a nine-play, 66-yard drive. The Chargers are averaging 10.1 yards per play. That’s not a misprint — 213 yards on 21 plays. Talk about an ideal start.
The Chargers jump out to a 14-6 lead with 11:02 left in the second quarter after Herbert fakes a handoff, rolls out of the pocket to his right and hits receiver Quentin Johnson on the run for a 26-yard touchdown. Herbert has thrown some absolute lasers tonight while completing his first six passes.
The Chargers thought they had forced Bengals receiver Tee Higgins to fumble his catch on 4th-and-1 and returned it 74 yards for a touchdown by Alohi Gilman. But the play was immediately reviewed, and a touchdown was never added after a replay found Higgins was down by contact before fumbling. It wasn’t all good news for the Bengals, however; Higgins hurt himself on the play.
Justin Herbert extended the Chargers’ second drive of the night with his legs, picking up 20 yards on a scramble, and then ended it with another highlight. The QB caps a five-play, 70-yard touchdown drive with a play-action pass up the seam to tight end Will Dissly from 29 yards out.
After driving to within three yards of the end zone, the Bengals were flagged for 5- and 10-yard penalties on consecutive plays to push them into an eventual third-and-goal from the 18-yard line. Unable to convert, they brought in Evan McPherson, who kicked a 26-yard field goal to give the Bengals at least three points. But they were oh-so-close to a touchdown.
With 6:27 left in the first quarter, the Chargers get the ball back.
After the Bengals punted after five plays and only 17 yards on their opening drive, the Chargers also could not muster much. Three plays and eight yards later, the Chargers punt.
Cincinnati takes over for the opening drive of the game after receiving the kickoff. Joe Burrow and Ja’Marr Chase are the entire engine of the Bengals offense and have kept the team somehow afloat in the playoff race.
It’s not breaking news to point out that converting, or getting stops, on third down is critical. But tonight it’s even more important because it’s strength-on-strength. The Bengals convert 47.3% of the time, the third-best rate in the league, while the Chargers allow opponents to convert only 32.8% of the time, the NFL’s fifth-best mark.
One factor? Los Angeles rarely beats itself, with only 49 penalties on third down, third-fewest.
The Bengals started this season 0-2 (their fifth 0-2 start in six seasons under Zac Taylor) before losing vs. Washington to fall to 0-3. Cincinnati won four of its next six games before dropping last week’s game at Baltimore, leaving the Bengals with a 4-6 record. In the Super Bowl era, only six teams have made the playoffs after starting a season 0-3 (since 2000, only the 2018 Texans have accomplished that feat).
In the 2022 season, Cincinnati started 0-2 and was 4-4 before winning its final eight regular season games to finish 12-4 and win the division title. They went on to reach the AFC Championship Game, where they lost at Kansas City.
After quarterback Justin Herbert showed his dual-threat ability while running for a touchdown on his season-high nine rushes last week, Chargers coach Jim Harbaugh took to calling the QB a “beast” — so often, in fact, the team released a video showing every time the coach marveled at Herbert. At one point, he even brought it up in a conversation with an official.
Herbert has been an exceptional athlete all of his life — I once spoke to an MLB scout who tried repeatedly, to no avail, to get Herbert to consider pro baseball. But it’s one thing to find running room against a team that wasn’t game planning to stop it. Will his running be a wrinkle again tonight? If Cincinnati devotes a “spy” to contain his running, it could only open the field for his passing.
Cincinnati’s 35-34 loss at Baltimore in Week 10 dropped the Bengals to 0-5 in games decided by six points or fewer. The only other team with more than five losses in games decided by six points or fewer is Jacksonville, who is 2-8 overall and 1-6 in such games.
Along with a six-point loss vs New England in Week 1 and a five-point defeat vs. Washington in Week 3, the Bengals’ close losses include three games against AFC contenders that easily could have gone the other way.
After nearly three full seasons under Brandon Staley (who was fired in December last year with LAC sitting at 5-9), the Chargers hired Jim Harbaugh as head coach in January.
Harbaugh has won everywhere he’s coached, including in his most recent stop at the University of Michigan, his alma mater, which he led to its first national title in 26 years last season.
In their first season under Harbaugh, the 6-3 Chargers have already surpassed their win total from last season, when they finished 5-12, losing their final five games of the season.
Herbert’s numbers this season are less gaudy than Burrow’s, but he’s thrown just one interception (fewest of any QB with 200+ attempts) and ranks in the NFL’s top 10 among qualified QBs in passer rating (103.2 — sixth) and yards per attempt (7.8 — ninth).
Herbert’s only turnovers (1 INT, 1 fum lost) this season came in Week 2 at Carolina. He’s gone a franchise-record seven straight games without an interception — the longest active streak in the NFL and his 210 straight passes without a pick is the second-longest streak in franchise history (he has the longest streak — 233 passes in 2022-23).
This season, Burrow is once again among the NFL’s best QBs. Burrow leads the league in passing yards (2,672) and is tied for the league lead in touchdown passes (24), with his passer rating (108.1) ranked second among qualified passers behind Lamar Jackson. Burrow has two games this season with five touchdown passes, while the rest of the NFL has combined for one (Jackson).
He threw 4+ touchdown passes in each of the last two games (five in Week 9 vs. the Raiders and four in Week 10 at the Ravens) and can become the first QB to have three straight four touchdown pass games in the same season since Russell Wilson for SEA in 2020.
Burrow and Herbert have been two of the best quarterbacks in the NFL since they were two of the first three QBs selected in the 2020 NFL Draft (Burrow was picked first overall, while Herbert went sixth, one spot after Miami took Tua Tagovailoa). Since coming into the league, they both rank in the NFL’s top five in passing yards per game, in the top six in touchdown passes and TD/INT rate and in the top eight in passing yards.
While Herbert is ahead of Burrow in terms of passing yards, passing touchdowns and regular season wins, Burrow has enjoyed significantly more postseason success than his L.A. counterpart, reaching the playoffs twice — making the AFC Championship both times and reaching Super Bowl LVI in the 2021 season.
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