The Bengals defense had a hard time stopping the Chiefs in the first half of Sunday’s AFC Championship Game, but they came up big in the second half and overtime.
After scoring three touchdowns in the first half, the Chiefs were held to three points after the break while turning the ball over twice and giving up four sacks. The second turnover came in overtime and set up the game-winning field goal while two of the sacks came on back-to-back plays at the end of regulation.
Defensive end Sam Hubbard had both of those sacks and he said after the game that the team just kept trying to chip away at the Chiefs until the dam broke for them.
“We were getting there the first half, he’s just got the best pocket presence of anybody in the league and we kept telling ourselves to keep chopping wood, keep rushing, keep rushing, and we kept being disciplined in our rush lanes and finally towards the end it paid off,” Hubbard said, via Laurel Pfahler of the Dayton Daily News. “It takes four, we were rushing three at times, and to sack him, it’s a collective effort of everybody just relentlessly pursuing him, and that’s all we did. We just kept grinding the whole way and it finally paid off in the end.”
Cincinnati’s comeback from 18 points down matched the biggest in AFC Championship Game history and the team’s resiliency will make it hard to bet against him in Super Bowl LVI on February 13.