Cincinnati Bengals wide receiver Tyler Boyd thinks his team would've won the AFC Championship against the Kansas City Chiefs if healthy.
The Bengals lost out on a chance to make the Super Bowl last season, as their 'Burrowhead' comments came back to bite them. Considering that game came very, very late in both teams' postseason runs, there were injuries on the Bengals and Chiefs side of the coin.
However, the Bengals lost that game, so there's little surprise that Tyler Boyd, who was missing for much of that matchup, thinks Cincinnati would have won had he been healthy.
"Still to this day, I feel like if I would have played the whole game, I was the key factor," Boyd said. "We would've won the game."
Bengals WR Tyler Boyd thinks Chiefs got lucky
The Bengals lost by a touchdown, and at the time of Boyd's injury, he had two catches for 40 yards. Surely, Joe Burrow missing the Pitt product had something to do with the team's demise, but is it really possible to blame the entire defeat on one player's absence?
"I just felt like we had enough depth for guys like [Trenton Irwin] and other guys to come in and play at a faster pace than what I felt like I could do," Boyd said on Tuesday. "I wish I was able to do it, but things happen."
If those comments sound familiar, it's because they should. The San Francisco 49ers have echoed the same theme all offseason, suggesting that the injury to Brock Purdy kept them from defeating the Philadelphia Eagles. The 49ers, however, were forced to play without a QB. The Bengals still had Burrow.
Still, Cincinnati improved this offseason, and could very well be in a similar position, staring down the defending champion Chiefs, come playoff time. If Boyd is still on the roster (the team could save millions if they cut him), he'll have a chance to defend his fighting words.
