The Bengals and Bills got together in the postseason, after the unexpectedly truncated game in Cincinnati to cap Week 17. Former Bills receiver Isaiah McKenzie recently claimed that, if the game had been played indoors, the home team would have won.
McKenzie, now with the Colts, made the comments on a podcast with Tyler Dunne of GoLongTD.com.
“The Bengals ran basic routes, maybe we should’ve did that, ran basic routes,” McKenzie said, via SI.com. “Like out routes, go balls, you know, instead of running routes that you have to be going lateral or coming back to the football, or turning and running curls and things like that. If we were in a dome it would have been a totally different game.”
That’s an indictment of the coaching, frankly. The game planning. The adaptability to the circumstances.
Of course, the game could have been played in a dome if the NFL had decided, as it did for a potential Bills-Chiefs AFC Championship, to give the Bengals a fair shake and send the postseason contest to a neutral site. That didn’t happen, and it’s on the Bills to construct a roster and an approach that makes the elements in January an positive, not a negative.
Meanwhile, Bengals receiver Ja'Marr Chase has dismissed McKenzie’s claim.
Chase said on Twitter, via Dave Clark of the Cincinnati Enquirer, that it was “my first time ever playing ina snow bro” and that you’ve “just gotta play at the end of the day.”
Still, McKenzie’s point is less about the ability of the players to perform in the elements and more about the kind of pass routes that could be more successful in those elements. It’s not a slap at the Bengals; it’s a compliment.
If McKenzie is directing an insult at anyone, it’s at his former team.