ORCHARD PARK, N.Y. _ A quick look at the Bengals’ 39-34 loss to the Bills here at Highmark Stadium.

Play of the Game

With the Bengals leading, 28-25, with 5:25 left in the game, blitzing Bills cornerback Christian Benford plucked Bengals quarterback Joe Burrow’s swing pass along the of scrimmage to wide receiver Ja’Marr Chase and returned it 63 yards for a pick-six that gave the Bills the lead for good.

Burrow, who had been so good in staking the Bengals to a 28-18 lead just three minutes before, then suffered another pick on his next throw on a tipped ball at the line of scrimmage by defensive tackle Jordan Phillips and caught by linebacker A.J. Epenesa at the Bengals 29 to set up the last score.

Burrow went seven-and-a-half quarters before suffering his first two turnovers since he came back from his toe injury. It’s also his first loss in nine starts.

“Great plays by them. Corner blitz and trying to throw a hot reaction and the guy jumps up and catches it,” said Burrow, who finished with four touchdown passes and a 106.7 passer rating. “Great play … I could have thrown it higher, I guess. But the linebacker was running out there underneath of it. So if I threw it higher, he might have gotten involved, too.

“The next one, tipped ball, lands right in that guy’s hands. Good plays by them.”

Bills head coach Sean McDermott pointed to his defensive coordinator Bob Babich for switching to the corner blitzes late in the first half. That’s when the Bengals gave up their only sack of the day.

“We were not getting what we needed to get done from a rush and coverage standpoint,” McDermott said. “That’s where some of their conversions were happening. Burrow was getting the ball out of his hands, so we felt like we had to change something up and tried to play him a little bit tighter. Sometimes that worked, sometimes it didn’t.”

Bengals Player of the Game

Wide receiver Tee Higgins, who missed the Nov. 27 win in Baltimore with a concussion, won the day’s Tough Man Competition. He came back from a trip to the medical tent during a game he made two acrobatic touchdown catches (one an Olympic high jump, the other one a sample of his patented one-handed sweep-and-score), and was their leading receiver with six catches for 92 yards. He also made a couple of in-your-face third-down catches in a game where the Bengals converted ten of 12.

“Tee’s great. Tee’s great. Both of those guys, Ja’Marr and Tee, know that teams are going to have different plans to take one of them away. They did not want No. 1 to beat them today,” Burrow said of Chase’s 44-yard day.

“So when that happens? Then has to step up and make big plays, which he did. And some that we would have liked to have back, too. Mike (Gesicki) made a ton of plays today. We had guys making plays all over the field. Unfortunately, we just weren’t able to pull it out.”

Gesicki, the veteran tight end, finished with a season-high six catches for 86 yards and his first touchdown of the season on a 12-yarder from a scrambling Burrow, put them up 28-18 with 8:44 left.

“That’s something we talked about in practice Friday,” Gesicki said. “I was supposed to run a 10-yard sit over the ball. In practice, I kind of turned it into a high cross. Joe was like, Hey, if it’s man, do what you want. Get open.’ That’s kind of what happened.”