SAN FRANCISCO _ How could you not have fun if you were a Bengal Tuesday night at the Pro Bowl?

Joe Burrow was credited with a passing and receiving touchdown on the same play. The best wide receiver on the planet, Ja'Marr Chase, turned in such a stupendous pick-six as a cornerback that his coach called it the highlight of the night. And Joe Flacco and Tee Higgins picked up where they left off back in November when they bombed away for another long touchdown.

"That's what we do," Higgins said.

So even though the AFC lost to the NFC and the calculator here in Tuesday night's Pro Bowl flag football game, 66-52, Burrow and his boys had fun. And as he told the sideline reporters, he's just fine doing it as a Bengal.

"It was fun to be with everyone," said Burrow as he walked to his final bus of the season. "Just playing football."

You know he had fun because he went to AFC head coach Steve Young as the third quarter bled out, and Burrow had yet to play in the second half. Young had faithfully held to his every-series rotation of rookie Shedeur Sanders, Burrow, and Burrow backup Joe Flacco. The order of their fan votes, he said.

Burrow then said to Young, "Fourth quarter? I'm just saying."

Young knew he was more than saying. Young was sold and rolled him out there two straight series. He would have done another if the clock didn't die.

"To me," Young said, "when a quarterback says that to me, we're doing it. You want it. You got it."

Of course, Burrow wanted it even if they were playing the thing in your basement next to the water heater.

"If you're going to be out there, you might as well try to win it," Burrow said.

The Bengals were pouring it on good for most of the night. They had a hand in 32 of the AFC's first 38 points and 40 of the flurry of 52 in the first 35 minutes of the game, and NFL commissioner Roger Goodell noticed.

"Great to see them all here," said Goodell on the sidelines at the Moscone Center, the first time a commissioner has hosted a Pro Bowl and a Super Bowl in the same city during the same week.

"There's a lot of orange out there."

The rest of the league was having fun with them, too.

Burrow no doubt made points with the big boss when he decided at the late hour to rescue the AFC's Urgent Care quarterback corps. He delivered the quintessential Swashbuckling Joe outing.

He got the AFC on the board with a daring pitch play that looked more like a give-and-go that he ran with the Luehrman twins back in Athens during Ohio's hoop days.

Except this time it was Dolphins running back De'Von Achane as Burrow took the pitch back before screeching up the middle from ten yards out to get the touchdown both ways before finishing it off with a high-flying spike.

Fun.

"The best part?" Chase said. "Having both quarterbacks here and Tee. Having the guys out here. That was best part. It was fun."

Fun, even though it was his fifth Pro Bowl. Less than hour before the game, Chase was hauling around two pretty cameras as he tried to find his social media guy. After the game, there was the Friday Night Lights scene with relatives all around in an intimate milling of family and friends on the turf.

"Tee. Right here," commanded Young, everyone's affable Hall-of-Fame quarterback-turned-coach as he leaned in to take a selfie.

"My mother wants that picture," said Higgins minutes later, still soaking in his first Pro Bowl. "I want it for myself."

If there had been a vote, Flacco would have won Most Popular in his first Pro Bowl at the end of his 18^th season. Fun? His five kids were scrambling around after it was over while he and wife Dana shared a look. The oldest guy in the game had to admit he was the sixth Flacco kid Tuesday night.

"I felt like I hadn't played flag since I was 13 years old," Flacco said. "It was a good competitive game. It was a lot of fun."

Fun. Flacco has always been careful to mention Higgins in the same sentence as Chase. Especially after he threw five touchdowns to the 6-4 rebounding machine in his six starts in place of Burrow.

Flacco showed why when he gave the AFC a 38-22 lead when he reached back to 2012 for one of his patented deep moon balls. Higgins consumed it in the back right corner of the end zone. Then Flacco tried to go back to him for the two-pointer that got knocked away. There is a Pro Bowl every day at Paycor Stadium.

When Flacco walked into the Moscone Sunday for the first time, he checked the ceiling.

"Have to throw low," he kind of joked. No problem Tuesday as he threw it into the lights.

"I rolled out right, and I saw the corner was just sitting there," Flacco said of Cooper DeJean, "so I just threw it up."

Nothing special. "A bomb," Higgins said. "That's just what we do. You know Flacco." What was special was Higgins' homage to his old Clemson teammate Dexter Lawrence with the "Sexy Dexy," celebration.

"It's been fun. Just hanging out with the guys on the other teams," Higgins said. "Guys I don't hang out with all the time. It's been cool just to hang out with them."

Flacco made sure he included Chase when he found him for the AFC's last score for a 52-36 lead four minutes into the second half. A two-yard pitch-and -catch when Chase does what he does, paralyzing DeJean ever so briefly with a knee-buckling second-effort route breaking in from the first pylon.

"I forget what we ran at that point," Flacco said. "The play kind of broke down. I saw he had some room in the back of the end zone to hit him. That's what I did."

A couple of rare drops by the man Burrow calls No. 1 scuttled the fourth-quarter plans of Young and Burrow, but this shows you how great Chase is. The best players in the world left the building talking about his one play that came with the fans still finding their seats.

"Sick. Unbelievable," Burrow said.

On the second series of the game, there was Chase going to Young saying he wanted to play cornerback.

"I was just out there having a little fun, man," Chase said. "It's my first time doing it. I thought about doing it last year, but I ended up doing it this year."

Steve Young would call that an understatement.

"I think it heated up and they wanted to make sure it happened," Young recalled. "So Ja'Marr says, 'I'm going to play corner.' I said go on with your bad self."

With NFC quarterback Jared Goff trying to sidearm it in from the 5, Chase suddenly turned into Patrick Surtain I and II.

He jumped a route headed to Falcons running back Bijan Robinson in the middle of the goal line. Chase made as good of a catch as you'll ever see with a stretching runner he scraped off the turf with only his left palm. He didn't break stride and was gone the other way. Complete with a jackknife somersault into the end zone that only served to put Bengaldom in cardiac arrest.

"I was just playing football. It's really not much to it. I'm just playing football," Chase said. "Just seeing the ball thrown, make a break on it."

Everybody else's eyes were bulging. Higgins was thinking of Bengals head coach Zac Taylor.

"That boy is athletic," Higgins said. "Now Zac knows he can do it."

Chase may be able to play corner, but he won't.

"No. Never," Chase said. "You know that. Not happening."

Young was still mesmerized after the game. Nope, he says, you wouldn't have seen that in one of his Pro Bowls in the '90s.

"It was a remarkable athletic feat. That was the highlight of the night for everybody," Young said. "What he did was so special. You don't see that in pads. The athleticism is more obvious without the pads. We were like, 'Wow, that's different.'"

Young asked Chase where he was from.

"New Orleans."

Young had to correct him.

"You're like from Neptune," Young told him. "You're from another galaxy."

There was still the real-world matter of a loss. Burrow was the first one off the field and into the locker room. You could have fun, but without the lingering after a loss. Flacco kidded that he didn't have the heart to tell him the only points they scored in the second half were 'my drive."

"He's so into it. I think he's still trying to get dis-connected," Flacco said as gathered up his family outside the locker room. "Guys were a little disappointed we weren't the big money team, but what are you going to do?"

While Young left the building raving about Chase, DeJean was wondering why Burrow would throw it to anybody but Chase and Higgins as Flacco huddled up his family in front of the Pro Bowl's red-carpet logo for one final photo.

Then Burrow emerged from the locker room with his "that-was-fun," smile. Being with the Bengals, his guys, he said, was an added bonus. It seemed like he was already trying to channel the good vibes and fun into next September.

"You never know," Burrow said. "You might need one of those pitch plays down the stretch of a game."