Cincinnati Bengals head coach Zac Taylor expressed his frustration with officials’ decision to stop the game after Browns defensive end Myles Garrett’s record-breaking sack of Bengals quarterback Joe Burrow during the fourth quarter of Cincinnati’s Week 18 loss to fall to 6-11 on the season.
Garrett broke the single-season sacks record with his 23rd sack of the season.
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“There’s five minutes left in our season,” Taylor said after the game. “We’re playing for our lives here, and I was never told that we’re gonna stop the game and in a critical moment like that. And the refs just said that they made a decision that they were gonna stop the game. And they said they tried to do it as quickly as possible. I didn’t feel that (they did).”
“We didn’t sub,” Taylor continued. “We’re trying to be on the ball and go and play with tempo, and the umpire just held the ball so that we couldn’t do anything. … Trying to get an answer was not easy. They just said that they made a decision as a crew to stop the game when it happened. … I was never informed of that. They didn’t say one word. … In the 90-minute meeting before the game, they never said one word about it.”
Garrett, who was limited in practice during the week with a hip injury, entered the game with a league-leading 22 sacks, needing one to break the record of 22.5, set in 2001 by Michael Strahan and matched in 2021 by TJ Watt.
Garrett entered the game having sacked Burrow and the Baltimore Ravens‘ Lamar Jackson 11 times each, according to Elias Sports.
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In September, Garrett sacked Burrow twice during a nightmarish offensive series for Cincinnati in the fourth quarter of the Bengals’ NFL Week 1 win against Cleveland at Huntington Bank Field.
Garrett wasn’t penalized for tackling Burrow out of bounds during their NFL Week 16 game at Paycor Stadium in Dec. 2024.
Cincinnati Bengals head coach Zac Taylor
This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: Zac Taylor questions officials stopping game after Myles Garrett sack