Filling in for the injured Joe Burrow, Joe Flacco was in sensational form against the Pittsburgh Steelers, as the Cincinatti Bengals grabbed a 33-31 victory.
He completed 31-47 passes for 342 yards and also got three touchdowns. Burrow suffered a turf-toe injury in Week 2 and is expected to make his comeback in mid-December.
Reacting to Flacco’s performance, Bengals head coach Zac Taylor said, “Yeah. His experience. He has 18 years of experience playing these games. We had a short week playing the Pittsburgh Steelers in a game that we needed to have. It’s easy for him … because he’s putting in the work.”
“He’s just so experienced in this situation. You gain a lot of confidence from that, because he goes out there and it’s not too big (for him). I have to enunciate my formations better because some of them he’s hearing for the first time. And so, I have to do a better job enunciating. I think it’s my Oklahoma accent. It had him a couple of times. I thought he did a great job managing the game.”
Meanwhile, Flacco said after the win, “Man, it’s a lot of fun. And obviously, it’s a lot of fun toward the end of the game when you’re getting ready to go, but yeah, this is what we do it for, is games like that. It came down to the wire. We know it’s going to, and we’re really, really happy about how the guys just stayed with it for the full 60 minutes. And, man, our offensive line was going today, you know? We’re running the football, protecting – doing a lot of things that we wanted to do.”
Hailing Flacco, Ja’Marr Chase said, “That’s a great question. I don’t know, man. We’re not really throwing the ball to each other at practice either, because this week was fast and we had walkthrough reps. Last week was a little off for me. Honestly, just coming in and being a veteran and just knowing the coverages and knowing what’s his answer – I think that’s his best reads.”