Joseph Ossai’s AFC Championship game performance was stirring and should be remembered for more than the end

Former Texas linebacker Joseph Ossai had the best game of his two-year career with the Cincinnati Bengals in the AFC Championship on Sunday, but his performance won’t be remembered for all the great plays he made against Kansas City.

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Instead ingrained forever in our memories will be the sight on our televisions of Ossai heaving tears and covering his helmeted face with his hands on the Bengals’ bench as the Chiefs’ Harrison Butker kicked a 45-yard field goal with 3 seconds remaining to give Kansas City a 23-20 win and send it to the Super Bowl against Philadelphia.

Ossai was flagged for a late-hit penalty on the play before Butker’s kick when he chased and then pushed down Kansas City quarterback Patrick Mahomes while they were both out of bounds, awarding the Chiefs a much-needed 15 yards to make Butker’s field goal more manageable.

If that’s the way Ossai will be remembered, then that’s a shame. Because without his play throughout the contest, the Bengals would not have been tied with Kansas City in the final minutes of one of the biggest games of the year.

“I’ve got to learn from this experience,” Ossai said. “I’ve got to know to not get close to that quarterback when he’s close to that sideline if it’s possibly (going to) cause a penalty. In a dire situation like that, I’ve got to do better.”

The reality of the situation with Ossai and Mahomes is that the defensive end was doing his job, pursing the ball and a quarterback that, because of a right high ankle sprain, wasn’t supposed to be running as fast as he was. If Ossai could have brought down the quarterback inbounds, the game would have gone to overtime.

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When Ossai finally caught Mahomes, both players were a half-yard out of bounds, and the shove Ossai gave the quarterback was a defensive one, with no malice.

“I was just in full chase mode,” Ossai said. “I was trying to push him, maybe get him going backwards because I knew he was going for that sideline. I was trying to make him go backwards, keep that clock running.”

Ossai was so out of control and spent after the chase and shove that he slipped and hyperextended his right knee.

After the game, Ossai was inconsolable. When he finally arrived in the Bengals’ locker room, he was met with intense support from his disappointed teammates and coaches.

“We’re not going to make it about one play.” Bengals coach Zac Taylor said of Ossai’s penalty. “Joseph loves ball. He loves being part of this team.”

“That means the world to me,” Ossai said. “These guys mean a lot to me. We come every day and we work hard for each other. To know that they have my back is giving me peace right now, for sure.”

Cincinnati defensive tackle BJ Hill was at Ossai’s side as he fielded questions from the media in the locker room after the game and said there were no hard feelings from Ossai’s teammates about the penalty.  “I don’t have [any] hard feelings about that play at all because I knew what his intention was: just to play hard,” Hill said.

The loss to Kansas City ended the 22-year-old Ossai’s second NFL season after being selected by Cincinnati in the 2021 Draft. He missed last year after suffering a torn meniscus in the Bengals’ second preseason game.

In 2022 Ossai was able to carve out a role as one of the team’s top rotational pass rushers. 

In the regular season he played 32.3 percent of the Bengals’ defensive snaps (334 overall), good for fourth among defensive ends on the team, and racked up 17 tackles, two for a loss, 3.5 sacks, 10 quarterback hits, two fumble recoveries, a pass defended and a defensive touchdown.

Over three postseason games, Ossai amassed six tackles, one for a loss, three quarterback hits and a pass defended. He was all over the field on Sunday, drawing multiple calls from the CBS broadcasting team, leading the Bengals with two quarterback hits.

Ossai will bounce back from the play that he will see for a while in his dreams – sports is, after all, about learning from the last play or rep or game and improving from and with that knowledge. 

“This pain is going to drive him to be great,” Cincinnati defensive tackle DJ Reader said. “That play is going to find him again – those roles are going to find him again as a player, and just be ready for it. He’ll get there.”