A typical chorus from Cincinnati Bengals players this week, including stars like Joe Burrow and Ja’Marr Chase, has been that this year’s Tremendous Bowl is “simply one other recreation.”
“Clearly it’s not, there are only two groups left and it’s for a hoop, but I believe one of the best ways to go about it’s to attempt to deal with it like any other recreation,” Burrow mentioned after Friday’s game, the final of the season.
Their opponent, the Los Angeles Rams, played in a Tremendous Bowl just three years ago, a 13-3 loss to the New England Patriots. The Bengals, in the meantime, had not received a playoff recreation since the 1990 wild-card spherical. This year’s Cincinnati group could also be the youngest Tremendous Bowl roster ever, with a median age of 25.8 years, based on an evaluation by the website FiveThirtyEight.
However, regardless of their relative youth, Bengals Coach Zac Taylor pointed to the big-stage expertise lots of his players earned in school or on different N.F.L. teams. Taylor, 38, is in simply his third season as a head coach, but was the quarterbacks’ coach for the Rams in Tremendous Bowl LIII.
He mentioned that he and Duke Tobin, the group’s director of participant personnel, deliberately constructed the group around gamers with postseason expertise.
Taylor mentioned that “They actually are usually not overwhelmed by these moments — they’ve confirmed that over the past two months,” Taylor said. It’s a number of guys who’ve performed in championships in faculty, whether or not it was at L.S.U. or Clemson or Alabama or Ohio State. After which, a number of these free brokers we’ve signed have been part of playoff groups earlier than that. So these guys, they know they belong on this stage. ”
Nine Bengals players, together with Burrow and Chase, received a nationwide championship in high school. Trey Hendrickson and Mike Daniels have been among the many free-agent signings who had playoff expertise with their earlier groups, the New Orleans Saints and inexperienced Bay Packers.
