For the first time with the Bengals, Joe Burrow opened a season with the same five offensive linemen he’d had the year before, and it showed. He was sacked just once all afternoon, and tackle Amarius Mims spent most of the day getting the better of Bucs pass rusher Rueben Bain Jr. Against a Tampa Bay front that was supposed to be one of Cincinnati’s tougher early tests, Burrow had a clean pocket most of the game, which is exactly what made the one throw he’d like back stand out so much.

It came in the third quarter, with the Bengals up 27-13. Burrow tried to fit a ball into a tight window, and Buccaneers rookie linebacker Josiah Trotter jumped it, returning the interception 38 yards for a touchdown. Burrow broke the play down afterward without hiding from it: he’d had an out route to the field, the flat defender got underneath it, and by the time he went to his backup read, Trotter had already beaten him there.

“If I didn’t have that interception, I’m feeling great walking out of here. You can’t make plays like that, so I got to get that fixed,” Joe Burrow told reporters in the locker room, per Mike Petraglia. “Offensive line was pretty lights out. I thought we ran the ball, ran the ball well in spots, and you know, I got the ball to my guys in space pretty quickly.”

Trotter’s touchdown cut what had been a comfortable lead down to 27-20, and Tampa Bay kept pushing. Baker Mayfield scrambled in from 9 yards out with 3:19 left to make it 33-27, and suddenly everything was on line again. Cincinnati had to answer with the ball in its hands. Burrow found Dohnte Meyers for 18 yards, got Samaje Perine a first down, and Tee Higgins closed it out with a diving catch to run out the clock, as Burrow went 3-for-3 for 49 yards on the final drive that got them the win.

Burrow still finished 25-of-35 for 254 yards and a touchdown, and by his own admission it was a genuinely good day. The offense moved, the line held up, and the only real complaint he had walking out was the one throw that let Tampa Bay hang around.

”Terrible (throw) from me. I had an out route to the field. The flat defender got underneath it, so I’m trying to throw the replacement, and the guy made a good play, but I can’t make that turnover,” Burrow added.

Josiah Trotter wasn’t getting much buzz heading into this season. The Buccaneers’ second-round linebacker out of Missouri was drafted mainly to eventually replace Lavonte David, the franchise icon who retired this offseason after 14 years in Tampa Bay. By the final whistle of the Buccaneers’ season opener in Cincinnati, though, Trotter had made history, becoming the first rookie since sacks became an official statistic in 1982 to record both a sack and a pick-six in his NFL debut, according to Elias Sports Bureau research cited by ESPN’s Jenna Laine. However, that pick-six is also the reason Joe Burrow walked out of Paycor Stadium, still stewing over an otherwise comfortable win.