The Cincinnati Bengals let touchdowns, interceptions, timeouts, sacks and, ultimately, a fifth-consecutive victory slip through their fingers Sunday afternoon at Paul Brown Stadium.

Despite dropping passes on both offense and defense and squandering timeouts and red-zone chances, the Bengals still had a nine-point lead midway through the fourth quarter.

Then elusive Dallas quarterback Tony Romo led the Cowboys on back-to-back scoring drives, the second of which ended with Dan Bailey kicking a 40-yard field goal as time expired to lift the visitors to a 20-19 victory before a stunned sellout crowd of 63,590.

“We had too many opportunities to put more points on the board, make stops and we had too many dropped balls,” Bengals head coach Marvin Lewis said. “It’s disappointing to lose a game that you have in hand, and lose in the last two drives.”

The loss dropped Cincinnati to 7-6 and cost the team a chance to move ahead of Pittsburgh (7-6) and get closer to Baltimore (9-4) as both AFC North Division rivals also lost Sunday.

“We really needed that one, but we didn’t make enough plays down the stretch to finish the game off,” defensive tackle Domata Peko said.

The Bengals held Dallas to just 138 yards and 10 points through three quarters before suffering a collapse eerily similar to the one staged against Houston nearly a year ago to the day.

“Yeah, unfortunately I thought about that,” Lewis said, referring to the Dec. 11, 2011 game when his team entered the fourth quarter with a 19-10 lead only to give up 10 points in the final 5:31 to lose 20-19 on a touchdown with two seconds remaining.

Sunday it was 10 points in the final 6:35 that led to the demise.

Romo drove the Cowboys (7-6) 68 yards in eight plays and hit Dez Bryant with a 27-yard TD pass to get Dallas within 19-17.

After Cincinnati called passes on four of the next five snaps and managed just one first down, they gave the ball back to the Cowboys with 3:44 to go. And Romo made them pay with a 13-play, 50-yard march that left the Bengals helplessly watching the clock evaporate after burning all three of their timeouts before the fourth quarter was a minute old.

“They kept our defense on the field and wore us down,” Cincinnati linebacker Manny Lawson said of the Cowboys, who converted 5-of-5 third-down attempts on the final two drives and 11-of-19 in the game.

“We had opportunities,” said quarterback Andy Dalton, who capped the opening drive of the game with an 8-yard pass to Andrew Hawkins for the Bengals’ only touchdown of the game but also threw an interception to set up Dallas’ first TD. “We got down in the red zone several times and had to kick field goals. If we make one more play, score one more touchdown, it’s a whole different game.”