Bengals vs. Ravens Thanksgiving NFL Week 13 post game review
Bengals Beat Reporter Kelsey Conway discusses the Bengals win against the Ravens on Thanksgiving NFL Week 13
The Cincinnati Bengals’ flight to Baltimore was delayed for over five hours.Head coach Zac Taylor noted the players bonded and remained in high spirits despite the travel disruption.The team arrived at their hotel at 1 a.m. and shared a late-night Thanksgiving dinner together.
Sleep is scarce for an NFL head coach in the middle of the season. For Zac Taylor, the best time for a quick nap is right after boarding the team’s flight for an away game.
On Wednesday, Nov. 26, Taylor was right on schedule when he sat in his seat for the team’s flight to Baltimore for a Thanksgiving divisional clash with the Ravens. Until he woke up.
“As soon as I hit my seat I was out,” Taylor said Nov. 28. “I woke up and we hadn’t moved.”
The Bengals flight to Baltimore from CVG, which was scheduled to leave at 5 p.m., was delayed over five hours, according to Charlie Clifford of WLWT.
When there’s a wrench thrown into a team’s schedule, it can be chaos. That’s not what Taylor saw as he scoured the jet and worked with Bengals Director of Operations Jeff Brickner to relay information to the team.
“You’ve got issues, you face adversity. It was fun to watch people deal with that adversity. Everyone was trying to problem-solve and our players responded unbelievably,” Taylor said. “I look back and you’re stressed for the players because they have to play the next day. They were laughing. They were bonding. It was one of those moments you can’t create on your own. It was a natural happening. This could be really good.”
It was really good. While Taylor couldn’t help with any mechanical issues and admitted he was “probably just in the way,” he did get to see everyone in high spirits as the team was dealt more adversity in a season already full of hardship.
It started on the tarmac, continued during the flight and spilled over to Thanksgiving dinner in the ballroom of the team hotel after the Bengals finally arrived at 1 a.m. Thursday morning.
“I thought everyone would just grab their food,” said Taylor, adding that typically players would get some time to themselves on Wednesday night before a Thursday night game after three days of heavy scouting on a short week. “That ballroom was packed at one in the morning. There wasn’t an open seat at any table.”
The travel delay did not affect anything from a gameplan perspective, so the team was able to sleep in Thursday morning after its late-night holiday dinner.
The team responded with its first out-of-state win since last year’s season-finale, a 32-14 victory over the Ravens on Nov. 27. It was a complete performance that kept the playoff flame burning at least for one more week, and one that injected some much-needed good mojo heading into the home stretch.
“To be able to wake up the morning after a game with a good feeling does a lot for you. It creates great energy when you walk through the door,” Taylor said. “There’s frustration all around from anyone that follows our team, but for us, you gotta wake up the next day and go back to work and pick up the pieces and find a way to come back. These guys have just kept fighting.”