Joe Burrow and the Bengals are headed back to the AFC championship game for the second year in a row after cruising past the Bills in the divisional round with a 27–10 victory Sunday afternoon in Buffalo. Though Cincinnati may be just one win away from playing in another Super Bowl, the third-year quarterback doesn’t seem to have lost the chip on his shoulder that has come to embody the attitude of the 2022 Bengals.
Since the league agreed to alter the AFC playoff rules in the wake of Damar Hamlin’s on-field medical emergency in Week 17, Cincinnati has made its frustrations about being left out of possible neutral-field scenarios well known. If Buffalo would have won yesterday, the AFC championship game would have been at Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta between the Bills and Chiefs, but there was no such plan for the Bengals throughout the playoff, no matter the matchup.
Cincinnati players and coaches have used the team’s absence from the adjusted format as fuel, which was clearly on display after Sunday’s decisive road win. Following the game, Burrow appeared to send a message to the league and the commissioner’s office on Instagram, posting a photo from the game and just a two-word caption: “Uninvited Guests.”
Burrow already had jabbed at the league in his postgame interview when he suggested the league “better send those refunds” to fans who already had purchased tickets to the potential neutral-site title game in Atlanta. He also echoed the sentiment conveyed by Cincinnati coach Zac Taylor, who sarcastically apologized for the Bengals’ spoiling the hypothetical Bills-Chiefs matchup and returning to the AFC championship once again.
“It is tough because they have to formulate the plans for coin tosses, formulate the plans for neutral-site games, and we just keep screwing it up for everybody,” Taylor said, per NFL Network’s Ian Rapoport. “I hate that for people who have to endure all the logistical issues, we keep screwing it up.”
Last season, Cincinnati’s run to the Super Bowl seemed improbable, but making it back to the conference championship game has shown that the team’s performance over the past two years is no fluke. The Bengals are not to be doubted as they head to Kansas City next Sunday, but even if they were, any hesitations about their chances likely will be used as more bulletin-board material.
