Bengals QB Joe Burrow's Intensity Reduced to Shrugs and Crumbling Cookies as Bills Snuff Fire, Squish Hope

CINCINNATI – In one respect, the Cincinnati Bengals’ quest to fight back from a disastrous stretch and make the postseason came to fruition.

Sunday’s game at Highmark Stadium against the Buffalo Bills certainly looked and felt like a playoff game.

“It was a playoff atmosphere,” Bengals quarterback Joe Burrow said. “We know what kind of game it was for us. Them, too. It was intense out there. Guys were fighting their butts off.

But just as the 2025 season didn’t go according to plan, neither did two massive plays in the fourth quarter.

Buffalo intercepted Joe Burrow on back-to-back pass attempts, returning the first one for a go-ahead 63-yard touchdown, on the way to a 39-34 victory.

And while there was a playoff atmosphere during the game, there was hardly playoff devastation after the loss.

The seething, smoldering fire we typically see from Burrow after a loss like this one, especially one where a couple of his own mistakes led to it, was replaced by a few shrugs and two different instances of him saying, “That’s how the cookie crumbled this year.”

Replace “cookie” with “the defense” and you might get a sense of where he’s coming from.

He had just watched hope realistically – albeit not mathematically – die when Bills quarterback Josh Allen scrambled for 18 yards on third and 15 to deliver the final haymaker to Cincinnati defense that has been staggered and stumbling for most of the season.

Burrow knew even if he played out of his mind it was going to be longshot when he returned to a team with a 3-8 defense and historically inept defense, even with marginal improvement in recent weeks.

For about 25 snowy minutes, hope thrived in the face of the math.

Burrow and the Bengals offense did what they did the last time they visited Buffalo in the snow in the 2022 Divisional Round upset.

They jumped on the Bills with both feet as Burrow truly looked in midseason form rather than a guy 60 minutes off a 10-week layoff and surgery.

The Bengals scored touchdowns on their first three drives. They converted their first seven first downs. Tee Higgins returned from his concussion and made one of the best touchdown catches of his career.

Everything was clicking.

But unlike 2022, the Bengals defense couldn’t bury the Bills, even with Burrow and the offense in peak form.

Cincinnati took a 10-point lead into halftime.

Buffalo was 1-26 in its last 27 games in which it trailed by at least 10 points at the half.

The Bengals were 20-1 in their last 21 with a lead of at least 10 points.

Then everything crumbled, and the Bengals fell to 4-9 to clinch their first losing season since Burrow’s rookie year in 2020.

And he shrugged.

What else is there to do with the Steelers needing to lose three of their final four and the Bengals needing to go 4-0 to have a shot at the postseason, not to mention the Ravens losing one of their final three games?

Burrow wasn’t in the mood to look beyond Week 18.

“We are just going to go out and try to execute and play well in the games,” he said. “We will look at all the future stuff when it is all said and done this year.”

His sole focus is to continue to play well and enjoy doing so while trying to put on an offensive show and see if the defense can find a way to win a game when the offense scores 33 or more.

“I think I’ve matured this year and gained some perspective on everything when I was out,” he said. “I’m just grateful to be out there and be a quarterback in the NFL and be one of the best. I don’t take that for granted.

“ I work really hard to put myself in the position to do that,” Burrow continued. “That’s what I’m going to do. I’m a player, and I am going to go try and play as good as I can and see where we are at.”

It’s a feeling he’s getting used to since the last visit to Buffalo.

The Bengals haven’t won a playoff game since and haven’t been to the playoffs in three consecutive seasons.

Balancing the joy of playing well and the disappointment of the team being so bad is something he’s getting accustomed to.

"That's been a struggle for the past couple of years, but I've grown and matured and understood the position we find ourselves in,” he said. “Certainly the last two weeks has shown me a lot. I'm just happy to be out there. We want to win games and be in the playoffs and do everything that we say we are capable of doing. We were 3-8 at that point and that's certainly not a playoff caliber position to be in.”

“That's how the cookie crumbles,” he added. “I knew it was going to be an uphill battle for us when I was coming back, and that wasn't really in my thought process too much. I just wanted to come back and put on a show and play well in front of everybody."