There’s nothing like an exciting Sunday night football match. After a day of sitting on the couch and playing RedZone, it’s a nice, healthy step back to sit back and enjoy just one game right now. If that play produces results, so much the better. There have been some fun ones this season, even last weekend with the Jared Goff interceptionpalooza. But for my money, Sunday’s game between the Chargers and Bengals was the best Sunday night game of the season. Both teams seemed to give the game away at different times and sometimes at the same time; this somehow only made the game itself more appealing. A battle of weaponized incompetence may not sound like riveting viewing, but both teams traded bouts of dominance over 60 minutes, and the only reason the Chargers took the lead 34-27 is because they choked just a little less in the final quarter .

If you want to be more generous, the Chargers won because they executed one more time than the Bengals did in the fourth inning, but that would ignore the way Los Angeles built a commanding 27-6 lead on the arm of Justin Herbert. to abruptly and completely forget how to play defense. Let’s start with Herbert though, as he was absolutely dealing in the first half. Herbert completed his first six passes for 123 yards and two touchdowns that night, the first of which was a beautiful laser down the seam to tight end Will Dissly. The second was even better, as Herbert took a wide bootleg right before swerving left and leaving his feet for a shot to a wide-open Quentin Johnson in the end zone:

On the next drive, JK Dobbins converted on a fourth-and-goal from one, and a field goal at the end of the half made it 24-6 Chargers. At this point, this seemed like it was headed for a blowout along the lines of, say, the 37-15 Steelers/Jets Sunday night game from Week 7; the bad kind of Sunday game, in other words, where every possession of the ball calls for an early bedtime. So all the more credit to the Bengals for, ahem, roaring back. After the Chargers opened the third with a field goal, Joe Burrow and co. went to work. On the team’s third trip to the red zone, the previous two ended in field goals by Evan McPherson; more on him in a moment – the Bengals finally got into the end zone thanks to a poor defensive play by the Chargers. With a fourth-and-goal from the four, the Chargers went hard, leaving JaMarr Chase one-on-one with rookie corner Cam Hart on the left side. Burrow saw it and punched his no. 1 receiver on the way to make it 27-13.

After Herbert took a painful-looking sack on third down of the next drive, the Bengals got the ball back and hit hard and fast: On fourth-and-2 from the 42, Tee Higgins hit a beautiful double move in and out past the seam, and Burrow had perhaps the easiest touchdown pass of his season to his wide-open receiver. Now it was 27-20. You can see where this is going, and anyone watching can see it too.

But let’s go back to Herbert for a moment. Although not what anyone would consider a Running Quarterback, Herbert has shown the ability to escape the pocket and gain yards on the ground, and he did it twice in the first half to spark drives for keep the Chargers going. Maybe that success put a little too much dip in his chip, or maybe it was just bad luck, but Herbert opened the fourth quarter with another nice run, only to fumble when he was hit by Logan Wilson, giving the Bengals the ball got. one score back and with plenty of time left. They didn’t need that much time, though, as a quick seven-play drive ended with another Chase touchdown, quite well coached by Burrow. And just like that, in about a quarter of the game, a 27-6 lead turned into a 27-27 deadlock.

I did mention McPherson, who made his first two field goals that night from 26 and 27 yards. Unfortunately for him, the Bengals kicker seemed to catch the kicker flu going around the NFL, the same flu that led to Eagles kicker Jake Elliot missing three kicks on Thursday night. McPherson followed suit twice on Sunday. First, with 7:35 left in the fourth, he barely hooked a 48-yarder from the left hash, which is fine and happens to the best kickers. Less forgivable, however, was his kick with 1:52 left. While a 51-yarder isn’t a bull’s-eye by any means, the Bengals put the ball on the right hash for McPherson, and he nevertheless still managed to hook the ball quite showily to the left, leaving the score at 27-27 under the two-minute warning.

The Chargers hadn’t cleared out all the second-half sludge yet, though, and went on a quick three-and-out to give the Bengals the ball back with 1:34 left. Cincinnati got a first down, followed by three incomplete passes and gave the ball back again. A nice kick put LA back at its own 14-yard line with 45 seconds left and two timeouts. This is where I have to mention Ladd McConkey, the rookie wide receiver from Georgia with the incredible name. McConkey had a night for himself on Sunday, finishing with six catches for 123 yards, none greater than the two he had on the final drive. The first play of that drive from the 14 saw Herbert McConkey in one-on-one coverage on the right sideline; McConkey is listed at a generous-looking 6-foot-1 and isn’t particularly big, but he went up and beat Mike Hilton for the ball, sending the Chargers to their own 45-yard line with 35 seconds left.

Two plays later, Herbert found McConkey wide open on the other side of the field and took the ball to the Bengals 29. Somehow, this all took just 19 seconds, and with 26 seconds left and already within field goal range, they were able to the Chargers tried to set up for a game-winning field goal and ended it. No one told Dobbins that, though, and the former Ravens running back went wide behind a pulling guard, shoved Bengals corner Cam Taylor-Britt and dove into the end zone to give the Chargers a 34-27 lead with just 18 seconds left. to go. to go.

(To Dobbins’ credit, I hate when players get on the one-yard line to kill more clock, and with how the kicking has gone this year, I respect not leaving the game to even but a chip shot attempt from one.)

Of course, that wasn’t game over yet; this game wasn’t that easy. Burrow found Andrei Iosivas open in the middle of the field on the first play of the next drive, sending Cincy to the Chargers 43 with 10 seconds left. After a failed attempt to gain yards by Chase on the right sideline, Burrow threw the ball into the end zone as time expired. Higgins was actually very close to catching it – whether he would have been in the end zone after landing or not is a question I can’t answer – but Chargers safety Derwin James arrived just in time to break up the pass and the to seal victory. the hosts.

Phew, that was a lot! Thanks to the NFL’s schedulers, who put together two teams with long and not-so-proud histories of collapses for a weekend capper. While the Chargers, now 7-3, may want to look at the third quarter defensive tape to prevent another 21-point comeback, the Bengals, who have fallen to 4-7 on the season, will rue the first half trips in the red zone only ended in field goals, or McPherson decided to cosplay me on the golf course in the two biggest kicks of the game in the fourth. Whatever these teams focus on next week, I’m glad they stumbled through what ended up being an extremely fun, if somewhat stupid, Sunday night. That’s the most I can ask of the time slot on a given Sunday.