Joe Burrow: ‘We’re coming for it all’

The fourth-seeded Bengals upset the No. 1 Tennessee Titans on Saturday to advance to the AFC title game, and are now one win away from a Super Bowl.

Whether they next face the No. 2 Kansas City Chiefs – whom they beat in Week 17 to clinch the AFC North title – or the No. 3 Buffalo Bills, they won’t be the favorite next week, but perhaps some of the doubters were convinced by the 19-16 road win over the Titans.

“We’re a really, really good team,” Burrow said after the game. “We’re here to make noise and teams are going to have to pay attention to us. We’re ... a really good team with really good players and coaches and we’re coming for it all.”

The Bengals have been working to change the narrative since the start of the season when they were coming off a 4-11-1 finish in 2020 and raising eyebrows with talk of Super Bowl ambitions. Now they have as many playoff wins this season as regular-season wins in Taylor’s first season (2-14) as coach in 2019,.

Cincinnati added a key piece to the offense by drafting Ja’Marr Chase with the fifth pick overall, upgraded the kicker position with the fifth-round selection of confident rookie Evan McPherson and continued to rebuild the defense through free agency with signings such as sack-leader Trey Hendrickson and cornerbacks Mike Hilton and Chidobe Awuzie.

“I think, number one, we’ve brought in a lot of guys that have been in this kind of moment in this game, and two, we’re also a really young team that doesn’t really don’t know what we don’t know,” Burrow said. “So we’re out there playing football with our friends, so that’s what it’s like.”

Linebacker Logan Wilson said Burrow is the kind of “ride or die” leader that players listen to and believe, so his message was well-received. Even in team speeches, Burrow remains “calm, cool and collected,” like the guy who wore rose-colored Cartier glasses to a press conference last week and continually downplays the significance of seemingly monumental wins.

Another team captain who spoke Friday night reminded the players how they started building toward these moments back in OTAs when they all bought in and voluntarily came with 100 percent participation.

“Everyone bought into ... volunteering to come back for OTAs, because we knew the potential this group had,” Wilson said. “And I think that just said a lot about the culture of the guys in the locker room that we bought into what the coaches are coaching us to do and here we are.”

Nose guard D.J. Reader said the buy-in was there because players came into the locker room wanting to change all the doubt surrounding the team.

Wilson’s interception with 20 seconds gave the Bengals a chance to win the game when otherwise the Titans might have been lining up for a field goal at the gun instead of Evan McPherson. Players said after the game they just had a feeling they would get the ball back in regulation or overtime.

The team’s mantra now has shifted from a “what about us” mentality to “it is us,” Reader said.

“I feel like we’ve been getting slept on all year, disrespected,” Reader said. “It’s something we take pride for in this locker room. We’ve got a lot of guys that go out there and fight every day. You all see it. We take it as disrespect every time. All year it’s been something. ‘We won’t do this, we won’t do that, we won’t do this.’ We don’t worry about outside noise. We read it. We’re not worried about it. We’re confident in us. We feel like we’re the people. We’re going out there every game feeling we’re confident, we need to be the ones to be beat.”