Beyond Lame: Isaiah McKenzie Uses The "IF WE WERE IN A DOME" Argument To Excuse The Bills' Playoff Loss To The Bengals

Who Dey Nation. Trigger warning. Your brain might turn into a pretzel and then melt into liquid that leaks out of your ears when you get a load of this. The fuller quote and longer elaboration about this stupid point from Isaiah McKenzie during his Go Long happy hour makes his take even worse:

"The Bengals ran basic routes, maybe we should've did that, ran basic routes. 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."

McKenzie is not only clowning his own coaching staff and teammates for not being able to stop "BASIC ROUTES" or to put more of them into their own offensive game plan, but he's also disrespecting how well Cincinnati executed to emerge from Buffalo with a decisive 27-10 victory.

I remember this one well. Being on the stream in the gambling cave. Asking multiple people around the office if they could tell me why the Bengals were six-point underdogs. No one could give me a straight answer because there was no logical one to be had.

Now hold the phone for a second. DO I think the weather benefitted the Bengals? Yes. Just not in the idiotic way McKenzie described. I feel like this guy should know ball and I should be the outside-looking-in dunce who can't make anything but surface-level observations.

Speaking of surface...the playing surface definitely worked in Cincinnati's favor. With three starters missing on the offensive line, the snowy conditions slowed down the Bills' pass rush, which managed only one sack. A would-be decisive athletic advantage in the trenches for Buffalo was nullified by how slippery the field was.

You saw what happened to the Bengals in Kansas City the next week. Constant pressure surrenders. Joe Burrow got sacked five times to kill multiple critical possessions, and the Chiefs recorded 12 QB hits in total.

But here's the thing...Cincinnati has this secret weapon, a mad scientist defensive coordinator named Lou Anarumo who the Arizona Cardinals for some ungodly reason didn't hire as their head coach. Lou has flummoxed many an elite quarterback, as you can read about more in this satirical article I wrote a while back that many, many folks did not take as satire.

Josh Allen was no different. Might've pissed Allen off enough to lock in on football in a way he never has before, if you go by what Allen himself has said this offseason. JA had a 68.0 passer rating in the loss. That's how impeccable the defensive game plan was.

So hey Isaiah McKenzie, I know you're with the Colts now and might get beat out by a rookie third-round pick in Josh Downs for the starting slot role in Indy. But like…don't take out any frustration about that or lingering bitterness about how your time with the Bills ended by making shit up. Shouldn't you know how to win in the cold in Buffalo, or have a team that's built to do so?? Your team straight-up didn't get it done. Sorry.

I don't care which field that AFC Divisional Round duel was played on. I'm confident the Bengals would've beat that Bills ass at least eight times out of 10. I'm being generous. If you gave Joe Brrr a fully healthy o-line, it would've been even uglier than the IRL final result.

Will hate to see what other spin zones active players or fans alike blender themselves into when trying to justify how the Bengals will suck in 2023. Or have that regression everyone predicted last year. It's gonna suck when they realize Joe will be behind easily the best o-line of his career and have, football gods willing, the first full, healthy offseason of his professional career. 

Now go buy some Joe Burrow and/or Father's Day merch. And don't listen to nonsensical, alternate-reality rants from dudes like Isaiah McKenzie.

Twitter @MattFitz_gerald/TikTok