Tag: Gesicki

Pratt had help from Joseph Ossai’s big rush against tight end Nate Adkins. It appeared that Ossai may have got a hand on Nix’s pass as part of an active night on the edge. He tied with cornerback Cam Taylor-Britt to lead the Bengals with eight tackles to go with two pressures and half a sack.

It will be recalled that the strongest part of Ossai’s four seasons came in the 2022 playoff run, and now he’s been pushed into a starting job because of a knee injury to Sam Hubbard. He’s played a career-high snaps the last two games with 51 against the Browns two weeks ago and 50 against Denver.

With Ossai getting the bulk of the 60 snaps opposite NFL co-sack leader Trey Hendrickson, defensive coordinator Lou Anarumo and defensive line coach Marion Hobby changed up their rotation Saturday. Rookie edge Cedric Johnson, the sixth-round pick out of Ole Miss, got 11 snaps that included his first NFL sack and was on the left edge for the last two plays of regulation when Ossai kicked inside.

After getting 34 snaps two weeks ago, Myles Murphy split time with Johnson Saturday and had 24.

Defensive tackle B.J. Hill, who played 54 of the 60 snaps, made a monster play on a screen the play before Pratt’s interception for a six-yard loss. He took all the snaps in OT, as did Hendrickson and Ossai on the edge.

Hendrickson shared the sack with Ossai and for the second straight year goes into the finale with a shot to win the NFL sack title. After leading the league since his four sacks against the Raiders on Nov. 3, Hendrickson is in a tie with the Browns’ Myles Garrett after Garrett had two sacks Sunday against Miami to reach 14.

The Steelers’ T.J. Watt won it last year by two over Hendrickson, 19-17, as he sits at 11.5 heading into Saturday night.

Before Nix took the field for that final hellacious drive in regulation with 1:29 left, the Bengals defense had held one of the league’s hottest offenses to 253 yards. The Broncos, who came in scoring the fourth most points since October, had only 17 at that point.

But the Bengals were hurt on Nix’s two long touchdown throws to Mims of 51 and 25 yards.

“A couple of big plays down the field got us, but other than that I thought we played pretty well,” Hill said. “I think we’ve started to put it together the last few weeks and it’s showed up.”

The 25-yard touchdown pass from Nix to Mims with eight seconds left that sent the game into overtime had safety Geno Stone’s mind whirring after the game was long over. The 5-11 Mims launched himself between the 5-9 Mike Hilton and the 5-11 Stone and somehow came down with it. Stone leaped up behind Mims.

“I didn’t want to put my hands over in front of him because I didn’t want to get a pass interference,” Stone said. “After seeing what happened, I would have done something different, but he did make a great catch.”

The play didn’t start the way the Bengals had wanted. Their whole thing was keeping Nix in the pocket and not allowing him to use his athleticism. But on fourth-and-one, he slipped outside the rookie Johnson’s rush after near nearly getting sacked and gunned it off that back foot.