Here’s the story of how Marvin Lewis saved the Cincinnati Bengals from bad officiating, a horrible loss and the possible failure of winning the AFC North title.

The Tampa Bay Buccaneers had just thrown a 21-yard pass to put themselves into field-goal position with 0:32 seconds left against the Cincinnati Bengals. Two quick runs and a chip-shot field goal and the Bucs would have their third win of the season, while the Bengals would lose the easiest game left on their schedule.

But Bengals coach Marvin Lewis and his staff noticed something odd about the game-changing play. The Bucs had 12 men on the field.

(NBC screenshot)

Ordinarily, this would have been noticed by either an on-field official or the replay official in the booth. But evidently the crew was as incompetent as the 2-10 Bucs and no one noticed. This left Marvin Lewis with a problem. He couldn’t challenge the play because there were under two minutes remaining in the half. All replays have to come from above.

What to do? Lewis told NBC’s Peter King that he was looking for an official — any official — to call timeout so he could plead his case for a review, but none was to be found. They were probably too busy not counting the Bucs. So Lewis ‘lost [his] mind’ and willingly threw the challenge flag, knowing it was illegal, but dealing with the consequences, which were major.

Since the Bucs had no timeouts, Lewis had stopped the game and given Tampa time to regroup. His flag stopped a game that had seconds ticking away. But when the replay official found the time to count the Bucs properly, the ruling on the field was overturned, the only penalty for Lewis was a timeout he didn’t need and Cincinnati was able to keep Tampa from scoring in the final 30 seconds, all thinks to a heady play from its longtime coach.

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