“I was just hoping it got there; I was just hoping it got there,” Burrow said. “The field safety stepped down, so I knew I had a good look for Tee. The corner’s playing outside leverage, and I knew if I just could hang in there for an extra second, I was going to have Tee down the field. I threw it inside a little bit to keep him away from the corner and then he made a great play and showed his toughness with the safety coming over. Great play by him.”

“I actually just saw that. He trusted in me to get me the ball,” Higgins said. “We have been working on that all week. He trusted in me, and I came up and made the play.”

With five catches for 88 yards (and one hellacious ball over the middle he plucked out of a head-on crash), that was five robust “T-eee—eee,” chants that he says may not have been just Bengals fans.

“Cincinnati fans travel well. Any and every game they yell that “Tee” and it’s a good feeling,” Higgins said. “Especially back home. I feel like even their fans were saying “Tee” because I’m back home.”

Third-and Burrow, the defense and the running of Chase Brown stilled the crazy long enough to win for the first time since 2013 with four turnovers. Revealing a stubborn resolve, the Bengals also got their first win in 20 seasons despite committing as many as 14 penalties, the high in the Zac Taylor era.

How crazy out there? Hubbard’s touchdown, the highlight of his seventh season, maybe his last play of his seventh season, was set up by his bookend edger Trey Hendrickson forcing a fumble recovered by rookie linebacker Maema Njongmeta, a name starting to be heard more often. Bengals safety Jordan Battle saw a 61-yard fumble return touchdown slip through his left hand a step away from the goal line. Half their penalties were pre-snap in the first half.

But with the Bengals up, 31-21, Burrow put away the madness by putting it in Brown’s belly 10 times on the final drive for 39 yards, the last one a five-yarder up the middle that took part of 366-pound T’Vondre Sweat with him for his tenth touchdown of the season.

“He’s been unbelievable, he really has. It’s exciting to see him come along like that,” said Burrow of Brown’s 97-yard day capping a month of four straight plus-100-yard scrimmage games. “He’s going to play here for a long time, he’s going to be a great player for us for a long time. That last drive the O-line came off on the ball, we ran it really well on that drive. He ran it really hard, that was a great way to finish it off.”

And then there was the six-yard touchdown pass from Burrow to Brown to tie it at seven. With three Titans rushing and eight dropping, Burrow won a ten-second dance contest in the ultimate playground scramble.

“Left, right, up, down and then back and I got the ball,” Brown said. “He’s so poised in the pocket and he’s able to navigate through there and just by him, his ability to extend plays is a lot of fun, especially as a skill player in the red zone. You never know when you’re going to get the ball.”

Just like you never know where the playoff trail can lead.

“We’re not out of it yet. We’ve got to play better than we did today going forward, but we need a lot of help from across the league,” Burrow said. “Teams beating teams that need to lose for us to get in, but as long as we keep controlling what we can control and keep winning, give ourselves a chance.”

Third-and-Burrow is just looking for the next conversion. Nothing else.

“What I’m focused on right now, is playing as good as we can play, myself playing up to my standard,” Burrow said. “That’s why I was so frustrated. Because I didn’t feel like we did that today.”