Welcome to the game of the year

The Buffalo Bills and Cincinnati Bengals meet tonight. Go Long will be on site. First, here's a live co-podcast with The Athletic's Paul Dehner Jr. and Jay Morrison to get you primed.

Getty Images

CINCINNATI, Ohio — Everything pro football was meant to be is on national display tonight at Paycor Stadium. Ralph Wilson and Paul Brown would be proud.

Buffalo and Cincinnati represent two markets, two fan bases that are as real and as title-starved as it gets. Both cities directly take on the personalities of their football teams and, no, that cannot be said in a place like Los Angeles. Let’s be honest: L.A. lost its team for 22 years and nobody cared.

The league can go ahead and chase billions of dollars in contrived markets until the end of the time.

You’ll always feel the purity of the sport in Buffalo and Cincinnati where locals derive their very happiness and sadness, day to day, from their football teams. That’s the first thought that crossed my mind when we started recording this live podcast at Fifty West Brewing in Cincinnati. On New Year’s Day, the outdoor space was… packed. Absolutely packed. Honestly, the thinking here was that maybe a dozen or so fans would show up. I was way off.

Thank you to everyone who spent a holiday with us. What a fun time talking Bills and Bengals with The Athletic’s Paul Dehner Jr. and Jay Morrison.

So much is on the line tonight. Josh Allen’s Bills are pursuing a No. 1 seed. After three straight seasons ended with losses on the road in the postseason, they’d certainly like the road to the Super Bowl to go through Orchard Park, NY. Joe Burrow’s Bengals are the hottest team in the NFL. They’ve taken pride in everyone expecting them to roll over in 2022 with one week-to-week “They gotta play us!” battle cry.

We start the conversation off by talking big picture and how these two teams were constructed.

Then, it’s on to the matchup. The Bills will be reliant on Allen’s physical gifts. There’s no holding back their 6-foot-5, 247-pound quarterback at this point. Buffalo needs every yard. The Bengals, meanwhile, rely on Burrow’s brain. No quarterback reads the field as well as him.

All links to the podcast are below.

APPLE

SPOTIFY

Join our Go Long Gameday chat right inside the Substack app to discuss the game and everything else that went down in Week 17 all day. It’s live right here:

---

New readers: Upgrade to a Go Long subscription to get everything we have to offer, including our feature on Daniel Jones and the New York Giants’ looming quarterback decision:

---

Live at Fifty West Brewing

Need some pregame reading? Bills and Bengals stories at GoLongTD.com…

• Taiwan Jones is the Buffalo Bills' heartbeat, Part I: 'Survival of the fittest'

• Taiwan Jones is the Buffalo Bills' heartbeat, Part II: 'Our mission'

• Deja Vu: How Joe Burrow can return to his Super Bowl moment

• How this became a Josh Allen World: A quarterback roundtable.

• “The Isaiah McKenzie Show: S2 E7.” It hasn’t been pretty, but Buffalo is finding ways to win. The slot receiver known as “Lil Dirty” explains how.

• Why Lee Smith is the Great American Tight End Story

• The Morning After: Cincinnati puts the NFL on notice

• Dawson Knox: 'I want to be in the conversation with the elite of the elite'

• How Stevie Johnson lit a flame in Buffalo

• An inside look at the Bengals’ formula with Paul Dehner Jr. on the podcast.

• For the Buffalo Bills, it's all about February

• 'Chido' is the cure for a Super Bowl hangover

• Eli Apple sends 'peace and love' to his haters

• Mario Butler's father was murdered in the most unspeakable way. This is what Butler did next.

• 'It was a bad, bad situation:’ The inside story on what happened that fateful night at Arrowhead.

• How Dion Dawkins, the "ShnowMan," became the soul of the Buffalo Bills

• Why Damar Hamlin is exactly what the Bills need

• What Fuels Motor: Devin Singletary is the player who can lift the Bills to the Super Bowl

• Eli Apple is getting the last laugh

• Mike Hilton and the Cincinnati Bengals are not afraid

• Efe Obada searches for home

• Joe Burrow is the most dangerous man in football

• Why Tyler Boyd’s past is the key to Cincinnati’s present (and future)

• Concussions, Flutiemania, a 'Miracle.' Bills QB Rob Johnson relives it all...

• Bruce Smith is still seizing the day

• The Perfect Storm: How Stefon Diggs changed everything in Buffalo

• The Pressure is on Josh Allen, two parts.