Boomer Esiason's Remarkable 1997 Retirement Tour

Not all retirement tours are novelty acts. Boomer Esiason in 1997 was the best QB in the NFL, and then hung up the cleats. Let me tell you the story.

When people think of retirement tours in sports these days, they likely think of the final seasons of Derek Jeter, or Albert Pujols, or Peyton Manning, or Tom Brady. Players who are very poor at their jobs, starting strictly because of who they once were, on teams who really don’t care if they win or not, but what if I were to tell you that there was a legend who came back to a team with which he had burned his bridge, played in front of fans that’d nearly ended his career with their jeering, did it all with half a mind on a child with a critical medical condition, and somehow ended up playing better than he ever had before to close his career?

Let me tell you the story of the Boomer Esiason retirement tour.

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The 1990s had been a rough time for the Cincinnati Bengals.

Coming off a Packers-like run of having had a top ten NFL QB (and therefore, a fantastic offence) for 18 consecutive seasons (Ken Anderson from 1973-1984, and Boomer Esiason from 1984-1990), culminating with a razor thin loss for each of them to Joe Montana and the San Francisco 49ers in the Super Bowl, things crashed and burned in a spectacular way in Cincinnati with Boomer’s fall from grace following the 1990 season.

Boomer was still around in Cincinnati in both 1991 and 1992, but he was a shell of his former self, and it seemed like he and the team were never able to forgive each other for the ‘sore shoulder’ that limited his performance in the 1988 Super Bowl. He did play fantastic and make the Pro Bowl in 1989, but the Bengals went just 8-8 and missed the playoffs, and it was never the same after that.

The 1990 Bengals were without a top ten scoring offence in a year with no starting QB injury for the first time since 1983 (exempting the weirdness of the strike-shortened 1987 season). They did still manage to make the playoffs, and even won a playoff game, but in the second round were no match for a Raiders team that themselves were no match for the Buffalo Bills, definitively proving that Cincinnati couldn’t compete with the top contenders anymore, and in the next two years the bottom falls out.

A three win season in 1991 leads the team to fire Head Coach Sam Wyche, the most successful in their history, and also draft Boomer’s replacement, David Klingler, ahead of the 1992 season, and just five wins in that 1992 season leads the team to pull the trigger on starting Klingler, and trade Boomer to the New York Jets, which is where our two stories diverge. I’ll finish the Bengals’ first, and then I’ll tell you what Boomer got up to throughout the 1990s.

The Boomer Esiason to David Klingler switch is the true demarcation point of where the Bengals end and the Bungles begin, but it’s not just the QB that’s the problem. One of the best LTs of all time, Anthony Munoz, also retired at the end of the 1992 season, leaving a hole on the offensive line that the Bengals (as of 2024) are still trying to fill, and the team had never had particularly good defences, being perfectly content to be carried by their offence.

Even in the relatively successful 1980s, the Bengal defence had ranked better than average just five times over the course of those ten years, which is why the team managed to make the playoffs just three times (less bad than it sounds in the era of just ten playoff teams per season instead of the 14 we have now, but still far below potential) despite perpetually fantastic offence.

Without that fantastic offence, the 1993 and 1994 seasons show what the Bengals could’ve been without all the great QB play. Three win seasons in back to back years at least net the organisation back to back first overall picks, but they waste both by drafting DT Dan Wilkerson in 1994, who is a pretty good player, but mostly in Washington, and drafting career backup RB Ki-Jana Carter first overall in 1995.

Needless to say, the Bengals in the 1990s don’t make a habit of hitting on their draft picks, but one thing they do get right is hiring back former Jets Head Coach Bruce Coslet to be their offensive coordinator, the same post he’d held for the 1988 Super Bowl team. Coslet brings with him QB Jeff Blake, recently cut from the Jets, and almost immediately installs him into the lineup over the top of the struggling Klingler.

With Jeff Blake, it finally looks as if the Cincinnati offence (which by 1995 has been dead for years) is turning the corner. It ranks 14th in 1995 in leading the Bengals to a 7-9 record, which doesn’t sound great, until you note that prior to this, the Bengals hadn’t ranked better than 18th in either offence or defence, and had compiled a 14-50 record since that last great Boomer Esiason season in 1990.

This is all of a sudden a playoff calibre offence, but the defence will continue to struggle, and truly won’t stop struggling until deep into defensive guru Marvin Lewis’s coaching tenure, and this will continue to hurt the team, and this is shown best in 1996.

Behind more solid QB play from Jeff Blake, plus a solid season from WR Carl Pickens (yes, George’s father), this offence finally takes the last step into being a top five scoring offence in the NFL. However, the defensive side of the ball takes a big step back in kind, falling down to 24th, causing this talented Bengal offence to finish with an 8-8 record, falling just short of the playoffs in the very middle-heavy 1996 AFC on a 30-27 loss on a blocked field goal to the Jacksonville Jaguars, who would take that playoff spot themselves, going on to infamously defeat the Denver Broncos in the 1996 Divisional round.

If just a few things had gone different, could it have been the Bungles in the 1996 AFC Championship game instead? You never know with these things.

Throughout all this time there had been stadium problems in Cincinnati. The team wanted a new stadium, and the city did not want to build one. Voters were not convinced that old owner Paul Brown’s death and the sudden absolute need for a new stadium were coincidence. I am not convinced either, but the abomination that was the Bengals from 1991-1994 was not helping this process at all.

The hope created in this 1996 season is what got the bill passed that built what is now Paycor Stadium in Cincinnati. Nobody ever refers to it as ‘the house that Jeff Blake built’ like they do for Peyton Manning in Indianapolis or Tom Brady in Foxborough, but it’s the truth. I’ve got more to say about Jeff Blake, but this is an article about Boomer Esiason, so I must move on, but keep this in mind. It’s not remembered very well these days, but the Cincinnati faithful were ready to ride with Jeff Blake, which is what makes what happens in 1997 all the more shocking.

This offence is not what it was just one season ago. In the first eight games of the season, it’s able to generate positive EPA just twice, and with the horrendous defence this team is forced to lug around, that means a 1-7 start, and all the hope is dead. The team does get back to back wins against the two worst teams in the NFL in weeks ten and 11, but 3-7 is not fixing this problem.

Quite frankly, I’m not sure what happened to Jeff Blake between 1996 and 1997, but the inflection point in his stats is clear to see for anybody with access to football reference. He will never be the same again. The coach who has been with him his whole career, Bruce Coslet (at this point HC of the Bengals), seems to know this too, as for a man who’d had as much success as Jeff Blake had with the Bengals, the hook comes remarkably quickly.

After a week 12 loss against the Pittsburgh Steelers, Jeff Blake is informed that the passing game needs a little more oomph. He will not be starting in week 13 against Mark Brunell, Keenan McCardell, Jimmy Smith and the electric 1997 Jacksonville Jaguars, but in order to achieve a proper understanding of who is starting, we must go back to 1979.

Boomer Esiason should not have been a football player.

Norman Julius Esiason (known as Boomer even before his birth, for his constant kicking in the womb) grew up on Long Island in New York, which is the first issue he faced, because New York is not exactly a football hotbed. It’s simply easier to play further South where it doesn’t snow in the winters.

At the time Boomer was playing in High School, there’d only ever been one NFL QB worth mentioning out of the state of New York, and it’s Ron Jaworski, which is not the world’s biggest compliment. In the years since, there’s been a few more (the most important of which beyond Boomer himself being Vinny Testaverde), but New York produces more athletes for other sports than football.

A three sport star in high school, Boomer used sports as his outlet to get through dealing with a lot in his younger years. His mother dying of cancer when he was seven, in conjunction with the family dog dying soon after, proved a very traumatic experience for the young man. This all came flooding back at age 14, when a friend and fellow baseball team member died after being hit by a vehicle before practice. Boomer, having seen the whole thing, began making legitimate threats to murder the driver. Thankfully, his coach (his father) was there to calm the situation down, but this level of anger would indicate to me a man who has some unresolved issues going on in his life.

Boomer will admit to you now that he should have been a college baseball player. An extremely highly recruited left-handed starting pitcher, with D1 offers flowing in from all over the country, he had a bright future there, but his main love was football. Therefore, he accepted the only D1 football scholarship he was offered (and one of only two altogether) to go play for the Maryland Terrapins.

Being a young man with a big ego, Boomer thought he (a lightly recruited kid from New York, for whom this was the only D1 option) would be given a chance to compete for the starting QB spot as a freshman. As an outsider, I can tell you there was never any chance of this happening, but as the man going through it, it hurt Boomer to not even be given the chance to play in practice. He was so far down the depth chart that he was more or less a fan.

Anybody who knows college football knows this is not terribly uncommon, but as a kid from New York with very little exposure to the football world, this got to Boomer. He started flunking classes, and doing various other things clearly indicative of a self destructive college kid. Boomer self-describes himself from 1979-1981 as a ‘disaster,’ as without his football outlet to focus on, he was spinning in circles and spiralling the drain. With zero transfer options, the most likely outcome at this point is flaming out and returning home to New York to pursue other options in life, but a fortunate twist of fate would ensure that this would not be the end of our story.

Prior to Maryland’s game against Vanderbilt in 1981, both the starter and the backup QB were unable to play due to injury. This gave Boomer his chance to play, and he would never relinquish the starting position. His 1981 and 1982 and 1983 seasons were all an exercise in rewriting the Terrapin record books, most of which have not been touched again since, and saw him be the first QB drafted in 1984.

Nursing the final years of the great but aging Ken Anderson, the Cincinnati Bengals knew they were soon going to need a replacement at the QB position, and decided to select Boomer in the second round of the 1984 draft, and what a choice that was.

After sitting for one season behind Anderson, Boomer’s time finally came in 1985, as Sam Wyche decided before a game against Dan Fouts and the high-flying San Diego Chargers that the pass game needed a little more oomph. In came the brash New Yorker with the big left arm.

Boomer would take the starting job and go on to rank fifth, second, sixth, third and second on my QB tier lists to close out the 1980s, for an average ranking of 3.6 over those five seasons. For context, Patrick Mahomes’ average rank over the last five seasons is three flat. That’s how good Boomer Esiason was over this five year stretch. He gives modern Mahomes a run for his money.

This was one of the better runs any QB has ever had, and Boomer relished it in ways you can look up on your own time, but eventually the 1980s had to end, which brings us to the aforementioned playoff nightmare in 1990, where Bruce Coslet leaves, the bottom falls out for Boomer, and the bottom falls out for the Bengals. They still do make the playoffs that year, but their days of contending are behind them.

Boomer knows this, and tries to ready himself mentally for what’s coming, but nothing can stop these years from being tough on him. In the 1991 offseason, the Esiasons welcome son Gunnar into the world, which should be the best day of a man’s life, but there are issues. The young man is constantly sick, and will barely eat, due to what doctors think (incorrectly) is a bad case of asthma.

As the poor play on the field continues, and the poor circumstances off the field continue, things begin to get really tough. This culminates in week four of the 1992 season. The Bengals are hosting the Minnesota Vikings, and at last the Esiasons have managed to find a weekend where (now 1.5 year old) Gunnar isn’t sick. Boomer is excited to have his young son at his first ever game, and dreams of a turn back the clock performance.

It isn’t to be.

What happens is likely the worst game of Boomer Esiason’s NFL career. The man who as recently as 1989 was on the level of Patrick Mahomes can throw for just 97 yards and four interceptions. Amidst the sea of booing and insults directed at him, Boomer begs his wife Cheryl to take their young son and go home, but she won’t. She will not allow Boomer to give up on himself, but the day doesn’t get any better.

Boomer breaks down in tears in the shower after the game. It’s not the poor performance. Everybody has bad games, but your son only gets one first game, and Boomer feels as if he’s ruined it. It’s a crushing feeling, one that causes him to have a serious conversation with Cheryl about quitting football. Ultimately, he decides to play on, but the Cincinnati situation is so broken that he’s benched for the final four games of 1992, and it’s over.

When Boomer gets the call in the 1993 offseason that he’s been traded to the New York Jets to play at home where his family and friends can watch him more easily, and reunite with Bruce Coslet, the OC who gave him his greatest successes, he is beyond elated. He thinks this is the best thing that could’ve possibly happened.

Considering Boomer has just had three miserable seasons in a row, the Jets brass make clear that he must compete for the starting spot, but just like a decade ago back in Maryland, the always brash Esiason has decided his fate long before the Jets can.

“They didn’t trade for me and my salary to sit on the sideline. Obviously, I’ve got to go in and battle for the job. That seems to be the company line for now … You don’t have to be a genius to understand why they’re trading for me”

I respect Boomer for so often saying in front of the curtain what so many would only say behind the curtain. I’m showcasing only one, because that’s all it takes to understand the character we’re speaking about, but there are a plethora of moments like this. The quote above is something you would never catch an NFL player saying today, but it’s so obviously the truth that it garners respect from me, because NFL QBs are habitual liars, and Boomer is not.

Some may perceive it as arrogance or overconfidence, but Boomer has always admitted to having a big ego. Plus, he’s been on the big stage for eight years at this point. He’s earned a big ego.

This big ego comes in handy at times like the 1993 offseason, where before he can ever play for the Jets Gunnar is finally properly diagnosed with cystic fibrosis, a lung disease that in 1993 reduced life expectancy to around 29 years (these days it’s 40).

Initially, Boomer (having seen plenty of CF patients in visits to Cincinnati Children’s Hospital) ss so crushed by this news that he elects to retire in order to spend as much time with his son as possible, now knowing in all likelihood that he will outlive him, but that Boomer Esiason ego leads him to change his mind.

What kind of message would it send to give up once the going got toughest? To suffer in silence instead of fighting to the end? Boomer Esiason decides he will not give up, but instead use his platform to take the fight to Cystic Fibrosis. Knowing his own personality, Boomer knows he has the capability to be the number one enemy on Earth of CF, and that he cannot do that spending quiet Sundays with his son. He must play on.

Not only does he have to continue playing, but he has to go back to playing as well as he did in Cincinnati, elsewise the vultures in New York would start circling. Sports media are heartless. These are the same people that took shots at Dak Prescott for opening up about his feelings in the wake of the suicide of his brother Jace. If Boomer plays poorly, you know what the media will say.

The typical sports media ploy. ‘Yeah, this is terrible and I feel bad for Boomer, but maybe having a son with CF is a distraction. We ought to go QB in the first round.’ Boomer knows if his crusade against CF is going to work, that cannot be the narrative.

It isn’t.

Boomer storms back in 1993 to post 885 Yards Above Replacement (4th among players with at least 250 plays), with a 14.4% DVOA (8th) and a 6.33 ANY/A (7th) in a turn back the clock season, and one of the better QB seasons the New York Jets have ever had, and each time he got in front of a camera that season he took it as a chance to speak about Cystic Fribrosis. It’s a truly inspiring story that will in time get its own article from me, but it’s not our focus today, so again we must move on.

With his point proven (in addition to Bruce Coslet leaving), Boomer falls back down to only slightly better than his Bengals form in 1994, and due in large part to a horrendous concussion suffered on a play that didn’t even count, in 1995 the bottom fell out again, with Boomer being a very real pick for the worst QB in the NFL.

On the field, 1995 was a disaster, but off of it Boomer was awarded the Walter Payton Man of the Year award for his dedicated charity work trying to fight CF.

At the close of this season, ABC came calling with an offer to be a commentator on Monday Night Football. We see even with the money players are making today that these TV offers are tough to refuse, but football is what Boomer does. Remember back in Maryland the last time Boomer had no football to play? It did not go well, so he turns ABC down, and signs a contract to play for the Arizona Cardinals in the 1996 season.

This does not go that bad for Boomer. He does end up being the best Cardinals QB between 1993 Steve Beuerlein and 2001 Jake Plummer, but considering this is the Cardinals that is not high praise. With the lofty heights of the 1980s now a long way in the rear view mirror, Boomer understands what’s happening.

I’ve seen him in his current TV role describe his New York Jets self as a ‘washed up old man who couldn’t do it anymore.’ Imagine what he thinks of his Arizona Cardinals self.

At the close of the 1996 season, ABC again comes calling. They want the brash, big talking, made-for-TV New Yorker on their show. This offer must have been much harder to refuse than the first one. First chances are rare enough. Second chances are even more rare, and you can’t expect ABC to keep this position open forever. It’s entirely likely that Boomer would’ve accepted this one, and that would’ve been that for his football career, if not for a phone call from an old friend.

As we know, by the 1997 offseason, Bruce Coslet had become Head Coach of the Cincinnati Bengals, and was having big success with QB Jeff Blake. Bruce called to talk about coming to back up Jeff, and despite some initial reservations, he was able to talk Boomer into it, and this is where our two stories again merge. The passing game has struggled over the first 13 weeks of the 1997 season, and with the high powered Jacksonville Jaguars coming to town, Bruce decides the passing game needs a little more oomph, and in goes Boomer Esiason.

Surely this decision is helped by the fact that the backup QB is a franchise legend who almost certainly is going to retire at the end of the season, but regardless of the exact reason he is starting, Boomer feels confident, and takes this opportunity to have his son Gunnar at a game in Cincinnati for the first time since that debacle against the Minnesota Vikings all those years ago.

I don’t believe Bruce is throwing Boomer out there strictly for retirement tour reasons, because this is not an easy opponent. Player for player, the 1997 Jacksonville Jaguars are one of the better offences the NFL has ever seen. They have the first ever fantasy football sleeper in 1997 Mark Brunell, in addition to two top ten receivers in Jimmy Smith and Keenan McCardell. The defence is not so great, around the middle of the pack, but it’s not as bad as ours.

Needless to say, this is an extremely hard matchup, so despite this game being played in Cincinnati in freezing temperatures against a Jacksonville Jaguars team that was in 1997 (and remains today) notorious for struggling in the cold, we are still touchdown underdogs, but sometimes being an underdog can work to a team’s benefit.

The big boys don’t like being punched in the mouth.

For Boomer’s first game back in Cincinnati, the fans are happy to see him back. It’s immediately clear that five years has been enough time to heal the rift that’d been created between our man and the Bengals’ faithful. This must’ve felt great for all involved, but as we will soon find out, even if they hadn’t cheered him before they saw him play, they would’ve had to cheer him afterwards.

It’s a completely different offence than that one it’d been under Jeff Blake. There’s nothing extravagant. The longest pass of the drive is only 13 yards, but the Bengals are able to score rather easily on our first try to take a quick 7-0 lead, and let me tell you. ‘Rather easily,’ and the 1990s Cincinnati Bengals are not words that you see in conjunction very often. Watching the Cincinnati offence so far in 1997 has been like trying to pass a kidney stone. Ugly, and painful, but now it’s not like that. With the old legend back in the saddle it’s 7-0, and it doesn’t end there.

Jaguars Kick Returner Willie Jackson puts the ensuing kickoff on the ground, giving us a second chance, and unbelievably we capitalise on it.

I’m continuing to harp on the incredulity of the Cincinnati fans, because to truly understand the meaning of this story, we have to think of this Bengals team like the 2018 New York Jets, by which I mean we’re at the helm of a team whose been bad for a while, and are going to continue to be bad for a while. We get chances, and do not capitalise. We give the other team chances, on which they almost always capitalise, and most of all we lose.

We always lose.

That’s what we’re dealing with here. That’s what the Cincinnati fans expect, but now, with the old reliable pairing of Boomer Esiason at QB and Bruce Coslet on the play sheet, it’s not what they’re getting. Instead, what they’re getting is a blast from the 1980s. The Jacksonville Jaguars are one of the best teams in the AFC, and without breaking a sweat we’re up 14-0 before Mark Brunell even gets to touch the ball.

This is what a contender would do. Not the Bungles.

Despite the success, our man does not get to touch the ball again until deep into the second quarter, by which time the score is 21-7, because our drives have been one three and out monopolised by Corey Dillon and the run game, and a one play touchdown by Corey Dillon. In between, Mark Brunell has led two drives deep into our territory, one of which put seven points on the board, and the other stopped on a goal line stand only after getting all the way to our two yard line.

What I’m saying is that it’s clear that despite our 14 point lead our absolute need to continue scoring is not finished, and our chances of winning are still barely better than 50/50. Our defence cannot stop Mark Brunell. Normally for the Bungles this would mean of a whole game of trying to hold onto an early lead that the fans always knew was going to disappear, inevitably allowing a comeback. 45 minutes of dread en route to a heartbreaking loss.

Not today.

Today, we have Boomer Esiason, and it doesn’t matter that we’re starting on our two yard line. We go straight back down the field for yet another touchdown at the end of an 18 play drive that eats up almost ten minutes. Unfortunately, due to our horrendous defence, leaving Mark Brunell with just 49 seconds left still isn’t enough to keep him off the scoreboard, as the Jags get all the way to our two yard line, but thankfully have to settle for a field goal and a 28-10 halftime lead.

Oh. Did I catch you getting comfortable? These are the Bungles. Don’t do that.

The second half begins with a Jaguar field goal, and after Boomer takes a sack to kill our potential response it’s a one play touchdown and it’s immediately 28-20. Not even five minutes have passed in the second half. There’s still a ton more football to play.

Boomer understands the assignment. What we need to do is keep Mark Brunell off the field as much as we possibly can, and taking eight plays to get down to the goal line is a good way to do that. Unfortunately, two passes into the end zone fall incomplete, and the situation forces us to take the points and the 31-20 lead, but even this is quite uncomfortable.

Jacksonville quickly and easily responds with a field goal to trim our lead back down to eight, and with a three and out from us they have the ball back before the third quarter even ends, and it’s looking extremely dangerous, but luckily on this occasion a Mark Brunell interception on the six yard line saves our bacon.

Our offence has ground to a halt, as we get just one first down on our next touch, to which the Jags respond with yet another red zone FG (their fourth of the day) to narrow the score to 31-26. Bruce Coslet tries to remedy this by letting the pass game move the ball down the field on their own, not handing the ball off at all on our next touch, which gets so close to getting us the FG we need to get back up eight points, but ultimately stalls at the Jacksonville 39.

Not helped by a disastrous punt which goes backwards, our defence is trying desperately to hold the Jags off, but not having any success. The clock is winding down. We now have the lead with three minutes left to go, but it’s not looking good. This is what I said before about the inevitable comeback. Things like this tend to happen to bad teams like the Bungles, but on a day like this, under the circumstances this game is under, the Bengals will not lose.

Another Jaguar turnover deep in our territory gives us the ball back, and after two Corey Dillon runs we’re facing third and four with 2:40 left to go, which leaves head coach Bruce Coslet a choice. Our defence has given up only six points in this fourth quarter to that monstrous Jaguar offence, but we’ve seen that it’s taken all the luck in the world to do so. Turnovers are not sustainable defence. That means this third down on offence is beyond crucial. Even leading by five in the fourth quarter, failure means we likely lose.

Which option do you go with to pick up four yards? The pass game or the run game? Well, Corey Dillon is by many statistics the best rookie RB since Jim Brown, and has been lugging around the dead weight that Jeff Blake has become around all season. That’s a really strong option.

The other option is the big left arm of Boomer Esiason. That same left arm nearly brought this franchise a Super Bowl, but in 1997 that’s getting close to ten years ago. Boomer is in this game for a reason, and the Bengals are in the position to even be able to make this choice because of him, but he’s still a backup, and a 36 year old one at that, back when 36 used to feel a lot older than it does now. The choice seems clear.

Perhaps that’s why this went so well.

Bruce Coslet decides to stick with his old gunner, and puts the game on the arm of Boomer Esiason, and Boomer rewards him with a six yard completion to James Hundon. It’s a first down for the Bengals, and this game is over, and immediately the starters come out of the game (a practice more common when fights used to break out more often than they do these days).

Boomer coming out of the game at the very end and not doing the kneeling down himself normally wouldn’t be something worth mentioning, but in this case it gives us this beautifully emotional photograph of Boomer and Gunnar Esiason, enjoying this moment together:

The last time Boomer saw his son in this stadium (the stadium he was once the king of), Gunnar was on Cheryl’s lap as his dad was begging her to take him home, to not let him see anymore, as Boomer’s career was falling apart right there in front of his family. That feeling was so jarring to the former league MVP that it caused him to contemplate quitting the game altogether, but they didn’t leave the stadium that day. They stayed and watched and supported him, and Boomer didn’t quit football. He kept trying to get back to his old self, any way he possibly could.

Today, Boomer played like his old self. He generated 0.287 EPA/Play in his very first game back to defeat Mark Brunell, defeat the Jacksonville Jaguars, and he got to share the whole thing with his son sitting right there on the sideline. I cannot imagine how emotional of a moment this must’ve been for both of them. Surely Boomer was wondering if he had any great games left in him that his son would be able to see and remember. Surely Gunnar would’ve been scared of what happened last time, and hoping for his father to be successful.

Both of them got their wish, and they got to celebrate it together.

From a football standpoint, was this an impressive win? Of course not. In fact, the opposite. The Bengals got extremely lucky to win, as the Jaguars generated more EPA than they did, were stopped in the red zone six separate times to either FGs or turnovers, and held the Bengal offence entirely silent in the second half, but you know what? Both halves count. Not just the second one, and Boomer did just barely enough in his fantastic first half to get out in front just far enough that even the fantastical 1997 Jacksonville Jaguars couldn’t catch him, and given the circumstances I’m sure it’s a memory he cherishes to this day.

That one game on its own would be a fantastic story, but Boomer’s retirement tour isn’t done yet. After that performance, Bruce is quick to name him starting QB for the rest of the season, and in week 14 against Philadelphia comes a football game I would never have predicted in a million years.

In this game, we run into the perils of speaking about NFL happenings that took place before 1999. These perils are twofold. The first is that NFL games from the 1990s are not particularly easy to find. If you don’t get lucky with a YouTube search, you must request the game from NFL Films and pay a royalty in order to view it. This is a process I’ve participated in, but it takes time, and to get this article out this week I don’t have that time.

In most circumstances, I would just review the game using its play by play data, but that’s where this game being played before 1999 comes in.

The era of ubiquity of play by play data begins in 1999. This game takes place in 1997, where play by play data is still mostly available, but patchy and not always present. For some reason, despite the previous and next games at Veterans’ Stadium both having fully complete play by play data, this game does not.

What I can tell you is that Boomer Esiason completed 27 of 47 passes for 378 yards, four touchdowns and only one interception in coming back from two different 13 point fourth quarter deficits to eventually take a 42-41 lead, but the defence cannot hold it, and the Bengals lose 44-42 at the Vet. His 0.588 EPA/Play falls just short of an all time great game, but the 28.82 total EPA does push him over the all-time great line, all of this out of a 36 year old man who seriously thought he was done on multiple occasions.

The fans are beyond ecstatic, and how can you blame them? If the offence had played like this for the whole season, this team would be a playoff contender. As we know from Trent Green, with a defence this bad, elite offence does not mean the Bengals would have made the 1997 playoffs, but it would’ve been nice to get close. This Philadelphia game is better than any game Jeff Blake ever had in a Bengal uniform, and Jeff Blake was good enough to get the city of Cincinnati to bankrupt itself building the Bengals a new stadium.

I hate that there is no play by play for this game. I understand that hate is a very strong word, but in this instance I mean every one of its four letters, but I have to move on, because Boomer is still not done yet.

Week 15 is an exceedingly rare (for the Bengals) Monday night home game against the division rival Tennessee Oilers (with 1997 being one of only two seasons that was the name of an NFL team, before they became the Titans), who are currently 7-6 and locked in a war for the final AFC wild card spot against the New York Jets (8-6) and Miami Dolphins (9-5).

If the Titans can win this game, they will remain only one game behind the Dolphins, and with the benefit of hindsight we know Dan Marino is going to get injured next week, so this playoff spot is still very attainable for Tennessee. All they need to do to make it to the Dan Marino injury is make it past the lowly Cincinnati Bengals, and the bettors still think they can, installing them as road favourites against us, but they don’t know what we know.

These Bengals are not so lowly anymore.

This game gets off to the right start with the opening kick being returned all the way out to the 46. From here, one 21 yard pass from Boomer to Darnay Scott gets us in great scoring position. Corey Dillon gets us all the way to the Oiler 15, where we face a critical early game third and ten that will be the difference between touchdown and field goal.

A 13 yard pass, again to Darnay Scott, ensures that this drive ends in a touchdown, and for the third week in a row we’ve scored right out of the gate. After an Oiler three and out, Boomer accounts for another 40 yards on a drive that gets right back into the end zone for a 14-0 lead.

If you’re thinking this sounds very similar to the Jacksonville game, it does, except 1997 Mark Brunell is no longer our opponent. 1997 Steve McNair is our opponent, and while I have tremendous respect for what Steve will go on to do, in 1997 he is no Mark Brunell, which means the Oilers are in trouble already.

Again the Oilers fail to score, and again we make them pay with an easy touchdown, and with ten minutes left in the second quarter it’s already 21-0. This process repeats and it’s 28-0 as we go into half, and it repeats again coming out of half leaving the lowly Cincinnati Bungles with a humiliating 35-0 lead over the supposed playoff hopeful Tennessee Oilers, and for all intents and purposes this ends Boomer’s day. He will throw two more passes from here, one of them being a 28 yard completion, as we blow out the Oilers 41-14.

If you needed any more evidence as to how Boomer Esiason has changed the narrative, the Cincinnati Bengals have just scored a blowout win, over a division rival, who isn’t even a losing team. The Bengals under Jeff Blake did do this one time, scoring an impressive 27-9 win over a Pittsburgh Steeler team that ends up winning the AFC in 1995, but other than that, for the last time the Bengals scored a blowout victory over a division rival who isn’t the perpetually horrendous 1990s Indianapolis Colts, you have to go all the way back to November 1, 1992, a 30-10 win over the (at the time) 4-3 Cleveland Browns. The starting QB that day?

Boomer Esiason, in one of the final games he would ever start before leaving the Bengals the first time. Here we are, better than five years later, and Boomer is back to torturing the opposition the way he used to. The Oilers hardly even touched the ball in this game. Their time of possession was less than 20 minutes, and less than 50 plays. The Bengals managed 54 rushing attempts in this game, in addition to Boomer’s 30 touches. It was so lopsided it begged belief to say that the Bengals came in as underdogs.

You may say the rush game could’ve won this game on its own, and I do agree that it’s likely the best rushing performance the Cincinnati Bengals have ever had as a franchise, but we’ve discussed before how a good rush offence without a good pass offence is nothing, because there will be eight defenders in run defence all the time. When the Bengals have Boomer Esiason dropping 0.599 EPA/Play on you, you cannot sell out to stop the run, which lets Corey Dillon have the most yards for a rookie RB in a game since Jim Brown, with his 246.

Regretfully, we are nearing the end of this victory lap. There are only two more games left to go, but still plenty of fun left to be had, because week 16 sees another different kind of challenge coming to Cincinnati to try to take Boomer on.

We’ve seen real AFC contenders (Jacksonville). We’ve seen AFC pretenders (Tennessee). We’ve had an epic shootout in Philadelphia, but week 16 brings something that none of those games can bring.

The 1990s Dallas Cowboys.

It’s Troy Aikman. It’s Emmitt Smith. It’s Michael Irvin. It’s all that, and it’s all rolling into Cincinnati to try to knock our man off his pedestal.

Initially, it looks as if they’re going to, as they begin this game by flipping our script on us. After we go three and out on our first possession, the Cowboys have built a 10-0 lead before we can even get out of the box. There’s just one minute left in the first quarter by the time we get a real chance at touching the ball, but Boomer makes it count.

A 61 yard completion to James Hundon looks like it’s going to put us in fantastic position to score, but a fumble on the end of the run means we might as well have just punted, as the Cowboys get the ball on their own 20 to start a drive that could’ve been the back breaker. Thankfully, it isn’t, and they have to punt the ball back to us, but at this point it becomes clear that Boomer is struggling.

After completing just one of his first four pass attempts (and having even that completion end in a turnover), Boomer’s two touches on this drive are an incompletion and a drive killing sack. Corey Dillon and the rush offence did enough on their own to get us into FG range to tighten the score to 10-3, but this cannot continue if we want any chance to win.

At this moment, the switch flips.

After getting lucky to stop the Cowboys on our own 42, Boomer gets us off our goal line with a 23 yard completion, follows it up with a 28 yard completion, and lets the rush offence do the rest of the work in scoring the touchdown that ties this game at ten. The Cowboys eat up lots of time on their turn on offence, ensuring we get the ball with just 56 seconds left in the half, but come on. Do you really think that matters?

We have two timeouts to use, but no need. A 14 yard completion and a 48 yard pass to Darnay Scott means it takes just 31 seconds to get back into the end zone again for a 17-10 halftime lead.

Are you kidding me? For one final time I will reiterate that these are the Bungles. They’ve been awful for years, and all of a sudden they’re doing this to the Dallas Cowboys? It’s impossible. It’s almost incomprehensible that just a QB change can change the fabric of a team so much, especially when that QB hasn’t been all that great since 1993, and hasn’t looked this good since 1988.

It’s not over yet either. After both teams trade punts to open up the second half, Boomer accounts for 40 yards on the touchdown drive that nets us a 24-10 lead, and throws the 32 yard touchdown pass that gives us a 31-10 lead.

31-10 against the Dallas Cowboys, and it’s over. The Cowboys do recover an onside kick that allows them to narrow this game to 31-24 by the end, but it’s over. Boomer completed just 12 passes in this game, but packed enough value into them to generate 0.311 EPA/Play on the day once all is said and done, and he’s now won three out of four games with only one game to go, guaranteeing him a winning record in his five game retirement tour.

No Bengals QB has had a winning record (in a sample bigger than two games) since, well, Boomer Esiason’s 9-7 in 1990. Looking into the future, no Bengals QB will have a winning record (despite a heroic effort from 2003 Jon Kitna) until Carson Palmer’s 11-5 in 2005.

2005 is a long way from 1997. It’s almost a decade into the future. Imagine how good it must’ve felt for Bengal fans to finally have good offensive play again, even if they knew it’s about to come to an end.

The final game of Boomer Esiason’s NFL career takes place on December 21, 1997 in Cincinnati against the Baltimore Ravens. This sucks, because typically, playing against a Marvin Lewis coached Baltimore Ravens defence is a guarantee that you’re going to struggle, but we all know by now that rules get broken in the middle of a stretch like this. Do you think Boomer is going to struggle?

Heck no he’s not.

For the fourth time in his five games, it’s an immediate touchdown and a quick 7-0 lead. The method of getting there though is slightly different. This time, Boomer has to account for 76 yards, because Corey Dillon and the rush attack are going to struggle all day against this Raven defence, and try their hardest to take Boomer down with them. Let me count the ways.

2nd drive: First down rush goes backwards, Boomer can’t dig the Bengals out of the hole.

3rd drive: Boomer does not touch the ball. Three and out.

On the fourth drive, Bruce Coslet seems to get it, and just lets Boomer walk the team down the field. This is not easy work, and most of the yards come five at a time. He is able to get the team all the way to fourth and three on the Baltimore 38, which in the modern day is an obvious go for it situation, especially with how well Boomer is playing, but this is 1997 so the Bengals punt.

The fifth drive is killed by an offensive holding penalty. The sixth by two straight incomplete passes, and that takes us into halftime. Thankfully, these are the Baltimore Ravens. They get six first downs in the whole first half even against our terrible defence, so that one touchdown we scored still holds as a 7-0 halftime lead, but after we stall yet again to begin the second half we get a reminder that this is still a football game.

An 83 yard touchdown pass cheats the lifeless Baltimore offence all the way into the end zone, and pulls us into a 7-7 tie. This is the opposite of what we wanted, as absent any help from Corey Dillon our offence is struggling. We are more or less gifted a field goal in response, with most of the yardage coming on an unnecessary roughness penalty, to take a 10-7 lead, but then the game falls back into the malaise.

We go into the fourth quarter still nursing a 10-7 lead. We’re five minutes into the fourth quarter nursing our 10-7 lead. The Ravens miss a field goal to preserve our 10-7 lead. Our only source of offence being the pass game is not helping us run any time off the clock either. We’re giving the Ravens chance after chance after chance to beat us. Something has to change, and finally, at the four minute mark of the fourth quarter, it does.

A 77 yard bomb from Boomer to Darnay Scott erases all doubt.

It gives us a two touchdown lead inside four minutes, and thank goodness it came when it did, because the Ravens finally score a touchdown of their own in the two minute drill, but it’s too late. The Bengals win 16-14.

This is the last pass Boomer Esiason will ever throw.

Everybody talks about Derek Jeter’s last at bat being a walk off single, but nobody seems to remember Boomer Esiason capping off his final go round with a walk off 77 yard touchdown pass to defeat the always tricky Baltimore Ravens, and end his career in Cincinnati on a high note, rebuilding all the bridges that’d previously been burned, and allowing him to walk into the light peacefully as a legend of the franchise.

In the 1998 offseason MNF came calling for the third offseason in a row, and Boomer told Bengals’ owner Mike Brown that if he could match the MNF contract he would come back and start in 1998, but Mike said no, finally causing the legend to accept the offer to move to the TV booth instead of the football field.

The Bengals would regret this decision for years, having to wait almost another decade to find a replacement QB of Boomer’s calibre, but the fans never blamed Boomer. There were too many happy memories to let a little spat over money derail what’d been such a happy reunion.

Most of the time, retirement tours in sports are novelty acts for players that are no longer very good on teams that don’t care if they lose or not, for the sole purpose of letting everybody relive the good memories. Perhaps that’s what this was intended to be, but it’s not what it was.

This was a legend of the sport proving he still had what it took to take a team to the Super Bowl, posting four wins in his five games for a horrendous Cincinnati Bengals team, and generating an absolutely ludicrous 0.386 EPA/Play in his 184 plays of action. That’s 71.04 total EPA. Time for the Josh McCown Test:

Here is an exhaustive list of all QBs who generated 71.04 total EPA in the 2023 season:

Brock Purdy, Dak Prescott, Josh Allen, Jordan Love, Tua Tagovailoa, Jalen Hurts, Patrick Mahomes, Lamar Jackson, Baker Mayfield, Jared Goff, CJ Stroud, Matthew Stafford.

Those last two barely inch over the line with about 73 total EPA each, and every other QB in the NFL in 2023 was not as good as five games of 1997 Boomer Esiason. Keep in mind that these statistics are not era-adjusted, so Boomer just has to eat the fact that he’s playing in the down offensive environment of 1997.

Boomer did not come back to be a novelty act, although nobody would’ve blamed him if he had. Nobody blamed Alex Smith when he came back to be a novelty act, but that’s just not Boomer’s style. He came back to be the best QB in the NFL again, and damn it he achieved that goal. He did it despite having to split his attention between football and being a CF advocate. He did it despite having to do PT with his son twice per day, in addition to his own treatment, and he did it as an old man who hadn’t been at his best in a decade.

Keep this in mind the next time you get out of bed with a sore back, or bad knees, or with too much on your mind. You may not be able to juggle this all like you used to, but for five weeks you can be as good as you ever were. Boomer proved it.

Thanks so much for reading.