Joe Burrow had good reason to frown tonight.

A passing performance of 428 yards, including 234 of them and three touchdowns against receiver Ja’Marr Chase, was undermined by the officials’ inability to see two clear fouls on what could have been the two-point lead.

Defensive holding, not called. Forced contact with Burrow’s head, no call.

Amazon Prime rules analyst Terry McAulay said both should have been called. And Al Michaels wasn’t shy about calling BS on how the no-calls robbed the Bengals of another chance at converting a two-point conversion that would have forced the Ravens to try to get in range for a potential game-winning pitch. goal with 38 seconds left.

All too often, at such moments, officials put their flags deeper in their pockets. But the rules are still the rules, and when the rules are broken, it shouldn’t matter whether the violation happened in the last minute of a game or the first.

And it wasn’t the only questionable decision during the ride. The officials — as they did in Vikings-Rams crunch time two weeks ago — missed a clear facemask from Burrow early in the drive. (Again, that’s not subject to replay review.) Then it looked like a fourth-down attempt by the Bengals fell short.

Since the drive started at the 30, the 40-yard line was essentially the goal line. And it turned out that receiver Andre Iosivas’ knee was down before the ball reached the white line.

Was it some kind of makeup call for the missed face mask? Maybe. Anyway, it looked like he didn’t make it to 40.

Yet the worst came on the two-point play. After the officials missed an obvious false start by Chiefs tackle Jawaan Taylor in overtime of Monday night’s win over the Buccaneers, some in league circles were abuzz about how bad the refereeing had become.

Based on what we saw tonight, no one can credibly say that NFL officiating is fine. Except in the sense of the cartoon dog in the burning room, drinking coffee while inevitably bursting into flames.