Football is getting too much like this

Late in the game at Pittsburgh, Tee Higgins caught a 28-yard pass from Joe Flacco with a chance to steam into the end zone and take a 37-31 lead. There was 1:42 left on the clock and the Steelers led 31-30.

Instead, Higgins went into a slide at the Pittsburgh 7. Flacco kneeled down three straight times, backing off and centering the ball, forcing the home team to use all three of their timeouts while running the clock down to seven seconds.

Evan McPherson kicked a field goal of the game for the win, good from 36 yards. The fifth-year pro made all four of his field goal tries in the game. Pro kickers are almost automatic. What's that like?

What's striking about the Cincinnati strategy at the end of the game is that it's something fans are seeing more and more of in sports. Intentionally letting the other team score to keep time on the clock. Sitting all the veterans before the playoffs. Sliding with a chance to score to set up the field goal. Running 40 yards backwards to take a safety and run out the clock.

It feels like the games are getting too analytics-driven now, that everything is calculated, sometimes in ways that look like coaches don't trust their defense or are afraid to compete.

It's a matter of time before there's an endgame situation where one team is trying not to score and the other team is trying not to stop them.

In this one Aaron Rodgers completed a pass to tight end Pat Freiermuth, a Penn State grad, out of bounds at his own 40, three ticks left. Rodgers took a shot at the end zone with a Hail Mary but it fell harmlessly to the turf.

There's too much lawyer ball in sports now. Everybody's trying to back into the playoffs or play for the fifth seed. The Bengal's strategy worked, but what if there had been a bad snap, or Rodgers connected on the Hail Mary? Sometimes fans would rather see their teams play to the whistle and compete to the end instead of always looking for an angle.

It's the same kind of thinking that leads an offensive coordinator to employ all kinds of fancy shifts and five different running backs when he's got a 6-0, 235-pound bruiser who's running for 7 yards a carry. Sometimes the best strategy is just to line up and play football.