The Cincinnati Bengals took advantage of a pair of rare Peyton Manning mistakes to grab an early fourth-quarter lead, but there was nothing unusual about what the Denver quarterback did after that.

Manning completed every pass he threw in the fourth quarter, including two for touchdowns, to rally the Broncos for a 31-23 victory Sunday afternoon in front of a sellout crowd of 63,623.

It was the 48^th time Manning has engineered a game-winning drive in the fourth quarter or overtime, breaking the mark of 47 he had shared with Dan Marino for the most in NFL history since the 1970 merger.

“He is special at it,” Denver coach John Fox said. “He finished the race pretty well.”

The Bengals, on the other hand, were left lamenting their inability to finish yet again as they dropped their fourth consecutive game to fall into a 3-5 hole that makes the playoffs look like a mile-high goal.

“We’ve lost four games in a row, and we have a hard road to go,” Cincinnati head coach Marvin Lewis said. “This team came out here today and executed a lot of the gameplan. Not consistently enough.”

Earlier in the week Lewis challenged the leadership of quarterback Andy Dalton and linebacker Rey Maualuga, and Dalton responded by guiding the Bengals on three consecutive scoring drives after they had fallen behind 17-3 when Denver’s Trindon Holliday returned the second-half kickoff 105 yards for a touchdown.

“We knew we had to come out and get the tempo going,” said Dalton, who was 7-of-9 for 128 yards and a TD during the back-to-back-to-back scoring drives.

The TD was a 10-yard strike to A.J. Green, who finished with seven catches for 99 yards. Tight end Jermaine Gresham added six catches for a career-high 108 yards.

The Bengals’ final two scores were set up by Terence Newman interceptions. The first came in the end zone to thwart a Denver drive, and the second gave Cincinnati the ball at the Broncos 27-yard line, setting up BenJarvus Green-Ellis 2-yard TD that gave the Bengals a 20-17 lead with 14:10 left in the game.

“We had to do our part of defense to stop them,” said Newman. “One of our goals was to get more turnovers, but at the same time we didn’t make enough plays down the stretch.”

And Manning did, going 6-of-6 for 69 yards in the fourth quarter. He hit tight end Joel Dreessen for a 1-yard TD that put the Broncos ahead for good at 24-20 with 11:47 remaining and later, following a Dalton interception, hit Eric Decker with a 4-yard strike to up the lead to 11 with 5:02 left.

Manning finished 27-of-35 for 291 yards with three TDs to extend the Bengals’ woes.

“I find a lot of positives because we played hard,” Lewis said. “We will be all right. It’s a tough road ahead of us, and we have to hit it hard. We’ve dug a hole, no question about it.”