Let’s paint a picture. There is 2:15 remaining in the fourth quarter. Quarterback Joe Flacco and the Bengals have the ball at their 45-yard line with no timeouts down 41-27. The offense had been going up and down the field all day, with receivers Tee Higgins and Ja’Marr Chase taking advantage of a woefully injured and outmatched Bears secondary. Despite this, their last drive ended with an interception by Bears linebacker Tremaine Edmunds in the red zone, the defense’s eighteenth takeaway of the season. 

Cincinnati Bengals quarterback Joe Flacco (16) throws a pass in the fourth quarter against the Chicago Bears at Paycor Stadium in Cincinnati, Ohio, on Sunday, November 2, 2025 (Albert Cesare / The Enquirer).

This is nothing for the ageless wonder Joe Flacco. He leads the Bengals to a touchdown in just four plays and 32 seconds, a 23-yard pass up the seam to tight end Noah Fant. A 2-point conversion to Higgins made the score 41-35 with 1:43 to play. 

With no timeouts left, Cincinnati is forced to go for an onside kick to keep its hopes alive. On the flip side, the Bears must rely on their special teams. A unit that allowed Charlie Jones to return the opening kickoff 99 yards for a score and had been getting gashed all day. Despite the low probability of the onside kick, the Bengals manage to recover. Their hope is still alive. 

And with the state of the Bears’ defense, their hope is thriving. The Bengals need just six plays and 49 seconds to go 57 yards for the go-ahead touchdown to Andrei Iosivas. 42-41, they have the lead. The Chicago Bears, who had a 99.7% chance of winning with 2:15 to go, had just allowed the Cincinnati Bengals to erase their fifteen-point lead in an instant. Commentator Adam Archuleta stated that he had never seen a defensive collapse in two minutes like the one the Bears had. Just about every Bears fan watching the game was likely completely demoralized. They had seemingly just watched their team find a new, creative way to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. Surely, there was no chance that the Chicago Bears could save this game… right? 

Caleb Williams and the Bears offense still had 54 seconds and a timeout at their disposal, and all they needed was a field goal. They had put up 41 points on the day with Williams having over 275 yards and three touchdowns, but they needed a little more. After two scramble drill incomplete passes, though, they were left with just 35 seconds left. On the next play, Williams scrambled again, this time running for fourteen yards as coach Ben Johnson called his final timeout with 25 seconds remaining. Every heart in the stadium was beating through the non-existent roof. 

Chicago Bears quarterback Caleb Williams (18) scrambles and throws a pass in the first half against the Cincinnati Bengals at Paycor Stadium in Cincinnati, Ohio, on Sunday, November 2, 2025 (Dylan Buell / Getty Images). 

Williams dropped back to pass and fired a laser to tight end Colston Loveland, who somehow shook off two defenders as he rumbled for a 58-yard touchdown with seventeen seconds to go. Jaws on the floor. The rookie stepped up to the plate. The Bears had the lead. The Bengals’ awful defense struck again. 

This time, Flacco and his team didn’t have enough of it as his Hail Mary was intercepted to seal the win for Chicago. It wasn’t pretty by any means. The defense and special teams looked atrocious and nearly blew the game, but somehow, some way, they found a way to win. The game was nothing short of a roller coaster, but for once, it had a happy ending for the Chicago Bears. They will look to continue their winning ways against the stumbling New York Giants next week. What surprises are in store for next week? Whatever you think the answer may be, it’s probably something else.

The post What?: Bears somehow beat Bengals, 47-42 appeared first on KRUI Radio.

This is a two-part series by KRUI Sports Staffer Cody Goodwin.  The second part is entitled, “What We All Want: Part 2” and is available on the sports page.

Having to put my BCS rant aside, it’s time I come to terms and grips with the fact that the BCS will always be a broken machine. But I must also acknowledge that it’s the perfect motor for some of the best writers in the business.  Looking past that, it’s time we get to what we really want. And a national consensus, and Facebook, tells us that we really want a playoff.

But how do we go about this? How will it be constructed? Who will be in it?

Luckily for you, I’ve answered all of these questions in five consecutive years of schooling. It’s called a research paper. And it’s only been expanded upon since I first wrote the thesis in eighth grade.

And with my layout, we’d have a 16-man, single-elimination playoff for the national championship. Check it out.

What we would first need to determine is who would be invited to the big dance. According to my paper, we’d invite the top two teams in the country; letting the BCS keep it’s main job of establishing number one and two. They would receive byes.

Next, we’d fill in the remaining seeds that fall in by the following criteria.

1. Conference Champs receive seeds three through eight, with the conference champions coming first, in order by the BCS Rankings.

2. Those teams that met the at-large criteria for a BCS Bowl game would file in the remaining seeds. With this factor in place, we would be excluding those teams from mid-majors (Boise State, Houston, TCU, etc.). We would also aim to include two teams from each conference in the BCS playoffs. Instead of receiving the BCS death-sentence, those who qualified for their respective conference title game, and lost, will earn a bid, as well as others who may not have won their division, but still met BCS at-large requirements (Stanford, Alabama).

3. Assuming there’s at least one spot remaining for an at-large bid, we would give it to the highest ranked mid-major, assuming they met the BCS rules for their at-large appearances.

With these rules in place (and a tad hard to follow, I admit), the field of 14 would be set and ready to go. Since we couldn’t plan this better before the BCS, and Alabama, screwed things up, we’ll play it off of what we have to work with. Here are the teams and their seeds:

1. LSU (BCS #1 – SEC Champions) – will receive a first round bye.

2. Alabama (BCS #2 – SEC at-large) – will receive a first round bye.

3. Oklahoma State (Big 12 Champs)

4. Oregon (Pac-12 Champs)

5. Wisconsin (Big Ten Champs)

6. Clemson (ACC Champs)

7. West Virginia (Big East Champs)

8. Stanford (Pac-12 at-large)

9. Kansas State (Big 12 at-large)

10. Virginia Tech (ACC at-large)

11. Georgia (SEC finalist)

12. Michigan State (Big Ten at-large)

13. Cincinnati (Big East at-large)

14. UCLA (Pac-12 finalist)

So you see, under this format, Boise is indeed robbed of a BCS appearance, simply because other teams made the given criteria, but only they come last. And again, Alabama comes in to screw everything up.

But Boise isn’t the only team that gets hosed under this format. Note that Michigan, Arkansas, South Carolina, Baylor, Oklahoma, and even TCU are all left out. But due to these rules, it’s fair that way. Arkansas and South Carolina are left out simply because the SEC spots were filled with the better teams. The same goes for Baylor and Sooner nation, and the Wolverines out of the Big Ten. TCU falls under the same rules as Boise State.

Hosed? Probably. But fair? Absolutely. In a more perfect world, there’d be four super conferences, that would hold 16 teams, with 8-teams in each of the conferences two divisions. Under this format, each division would send their top two teams to the big dance, with the conference title game to decide the seeding for the first two of each conference, and the others thrown in at a blind draw.

It would create a full 16-man football playoff to decide the best team in the nation.

Continued on…”What We All Want: Part 2″

The post What We All Want: The 2011-2012 BCS Playoff Scenario appeared first on KRUI Radio.