Bengals' Joseph Ossai won't be defined by key penalty in AFC championship game, says his ex-coach
Joseph Ossai played one of his best games in the AFC title game, including this tackle on Patrick Mahomes, but it was his late hit on Mahomes with eight seconds left that was drawing all the attention.As Cincinnati's Joseph Ossai sat on the bench in the bitter cold at Arrowhead Stadium late Sunday night, tears streaming from his eyes, Dereck Rush could feel the immense heartbreak from his living room nearly 700 miles away in the Brazos Valley.
“When the television started showing his emotions on the sideline, it seemed like he was kind of putting the burden on his shoulders, that he cost them the game,” said Rush, now an athletics administrator with Bryan ISD. “But that’s really not the case. I was going to text him this morning and let him know that things don’t always fall your way, but you keep on working hard. He knows all those things, and good things are going to happen for him.
“It’s extremely hard,” Ossai told reporters after the game. “I was in full chase mode, and I was trying to push him to maybe get him going backward because I knew he was going for that sideline. I was trying to make him go backward, get that clock running. I didn’t know how far out of bounds we were.”Despite the costly mistake, Ossai was comforted by his teammates after the game.
Defensive tackle D.J. Reader, who played with the Texans before singing with Cincinnati in 2020, was one of the players who offered encouraging words.
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