At the end of one of the most dastardly weekends ever for Ohio football, rookie cornerback DJ Turner smoothed out his solid blue jacket with the block M before leaving the Bengals locker room at Paycor Stadium Sunday when someone told him that it looked like the real thing.
A Michigan letter jacket.
Turner managed a smile and nod on a day the second-round pick from Ann Arbor proved again he’s the real thing. He couldn’t stave off a 16-10 loss to the Steelers that severely damaged the Bengals’ playoff hopes, but he was around the ball enough to help hold the Steelers to under 20 points for the sixth time this season and give Bengals backup quarterback Jake Browning a shot to win his first NFL start.
With No. 1 cover cornerback Cam Taylor-Britt iced with a quad injury, Turner played all the snaps with a career-high 71 plays and saved two precious touchdowns in the low-scoring rain with his two passes defensed, and added a fumble recovery and five tackles. Vet Chidobe Awuzie also answered with a season-high 69 snaps on the other corner.
While describing his frenetic 15-second sequence late in the first quarter, Turner also delivered a mantra for the last six games as the Bengals fell to 5-6.
“Those two plays, it was me not giving up on the play,” Turner said.
The Browns also had their playoff hopes dealt a blow with a loss in Denver. We all know what Turner’s Wolverines did to Ohio State’s national title chances in Ann Arbor Saturday. In an ironic way, the Steelers’ first 400-yard game since 2020 revealed a new wave of defensive players that should help the Bengals the rest of the decade.
Their first three picks in the draft stood up in what amounted to their first playoff game. Joining Turner was third-rounder Jordan Battle in his first NFL start and in a career-high 59 snaps he offered another high-volume game with eight tackles ten days after racking up 11 in Baltimore. Meanwhile, from the edge first-rounder Myles…
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