The Ravens have won four straight and can cruise into the playoffs with a win over the Bengals. But winning can’t be taken as a given, not with Baltimore’s losing record on the Bengals’ home turf (9-15) and Cincy’s consecutive wins over Pittsburgh and Houston. Still, though, the Ravens are a much better team, and there’s too much on the line for Baltimore to relax.
WHAT: Week 17, Game 16 at Cincinnati Bengals
WHEN: 1 p.m. (ET); Sunday, January 3, 2021
WHERE: Paul Brown Stadium, Cincinnati (65,535)
RECORDS: Ravens, 10-5; Bengals, 4-10-1
LIFETIME SERIES (regular season): Ravens lead, 26-23. In Cincinnati, the Ravens are 9-15 against the Bengals, having split the last four Queen City meetings. Notably, the Bengals have won six of their last eight home games against Baltimore, but Baltimore has won the last four overall meetings.
Local TV and Radio: WJZ-TV, Channel 13, and WIYY-FM, 97.9
REFEREE: Land Clark
About the Bengals
—For their 50th regular-season meeting with Baltimore, the Bengals will wear black jerseys and black pants for this year’s home meeting with the Ravens. Since the team redesigned its jerseys at the start of the 2004 season, this combination has produced the fourth-best record among the seven possible combinations the Bengals wear. Cincinnati is 18-19-1 (.487) when wearing this ensemble. This will likely put the Ravens in white jerseys and white pants, their traditional road-trip look, although the pants could be black or purple.
—The Bengals were born in 1968 as an American Football League expansion franchise and was the last of that league’s ten teams to join in and begin play before it merged with the NFL two years later. They are currently playing in their 53rd season. In their first season in the AFC after the 1970 merger, the Bengals made the playoffs but lost in the Divisional round to the Baltimore Colts at Baltimore’s Memorial Stadium, 17-0. That game marked the first true AFC playoff game in post-merger league history.
—The Bengals franchise has appeared in the playoffs 14 times in 52 completed seasons, including nine division titles, with four coming since the AFC North was formed in 2002. The Bengals haven’t won the division since 2015. They have played in two Super Bowls (16, 23), losing both to the San Francisco 49ers, but haven’t won a postseason game since after the 1990 season, despite a franchise-record five straight playoff berths from 2011-15.
–Of the NFL’s current 32-team lineup, the Bengals are one of a dozen teams that has never won a Super Bowl, despite its two appearances there. Cincinnati is one of five teams to have not won any titles before or during the Super Bowl era. It is the only AFL team to have not won a title in that league or the present-day NFL (it only played in the AFL during its final two seasons of existence). At one point, Cincinnati went 14 straight seasons without a playoff appearance or a winning record (1991-2004), and the team’s current postseason win drought is the longest active one in the entire league.
–When the Baltimore Colts were part of the NFL, they split eight regular-season meetings with Cincinnati before the Colts moved to Indianapolis in March 1984. Not including the aforementioned AFC playoff game, the Colts won three of the first four meetings before Cincinnati took three in a row. Baltimore won the final pre-move Colts-Bengals game in 1983, a 34-31 Riverfront Stadium thriller.
–The Bengals played at old Nippert Stadium in Cincinnati before moving to the antiseptic, nondescript, multi-use facility known as Riverfront Stadium in 1970, sharing it with the Reds of Major League Baseball. In 1996, voters in Ohio’s Hamilton County approved a half-percent sales tax increase to pay for new stadiums for both teams, and Paul Brown Stadium – named for the longtime Cleveland Browns coach who took over the expansion Bengals in 1968 – opened in 2000. The stadium featured a natural-grass surface until 2004 when synthetic FieldTurf was installed.
—In 2020, for the eighth time in a ten-year span, including six in a row at one point, the first of the two annual Ravens-Bengals games was played in Baltimore. This year’s return match was scheduled for Cincinnati on the season’s final Sunday, a strange-yet-frequent occurrence since intra-divisional play for Week 17 was mandated by the league starting in 2010. The Ravens and Bengals will close the regular season against each other for the eighth time, and sixth in Cincinnati, since 2010. Before this year, the Ravens’ regular-season finales also took place in Cincinnati in 2011, 2012, 2013, 2015, and 2016. Cincinnati visited Baltimore to close the 2010 and 2017 campaigns. Before the Week 17 mandate went into place, Baltimore also finished the 1997 season in Cincinnati, losing a 16-14 decision in ex-Maryland quarterback Boomer Esiason’s final game with the Bengals.
–The Ravens, winners at home over the Bengals earlier this year, have swept the head-to-head series over Cincinnati seven times, with last year’s sweep being Baltimore’s first over the Bengals since 2011. Meanwhile, the Bengals have recorded six sweeps over the Ravens, and there have been 11 splits. Baltimore will have played all three return (second) games against AFC North teams on the road this year (they are 1-1 in 2020 return matches), while all three of Cincinnati’s return division games will have been at home (also 1-1 so far).
–Overall, Cincinnati has won eight of its last 14 and nine of the last 16 meetings with the Ravens. After they won the first meeting in 2018, the Bengals led the overall head-to-head series against Baltimore for the first time since 1998, when it was 3-2. However, there has been a great deal of suspense, for 14 of the last 20 games in this series – including 12 of the last 15 games between these teams in Baltimore – have been decided by one score, including six of the last seven contests.
–The Bengals can claim the two biggest road comebacks in their history at Baltimore, rallying from 18 points down to win at Memorial Stadium in 1996. They also notched a 17-point rally behind then-rookie quarterback Carson Palmer in 2004 at M&T Bank Stadium. The latter game was part of a 2-4 late-season slide that knocked the then-defending division champion Ravens out of the playoff chase.
–Baltimore has 26 regular-season wins over the Bengals. The two teams have never met in the postseason. That win total represents the second-most regular-season victories the Ravens have over any league team, having beaten Cleveland 33 times and Pittsburgh on 23 occasions.
–Even though Cincinnati currently doesn’t have many good players, it has drafted well. As of December 28, Cincinnati has 45 of its draftees currently occupying roster spots around the NFL, only two behind league leaders Baltimore and Green Bay (47 each). Of the 53 current active-roster Bengals, 32 entered the league as either Cincinnati draft picks or Bengals undrafted free agents. As for draft picks staying with their original teams, Cincinnati has 26 such players, and the Ravens have 29; Green Bay leads this category with 32.
–Even though the Bengals are unsurprisingly out of the playoff chase, they are closing out the season in a stretch that has seen them play three of their final four games at home, as well as four of their last six contests. With all those home games at the back end of the schedule, it comes as no surprise that four of their first six games to open the season were on the road, including the earlier visit to Baltimore, a 27-3 loss in Week Five. The Bengals’ ten losses have come by an average margin of 11.3 points, with five of them coming by one-score margins. In Week Three, Cincinnati and Philadelphia played to an overtime tie, the second time those teams have had such a result despite their infrequent clashes. The Bengals are coming into Sunday’s game having won two straight, against Pittsburgh and Houston.
–With a new, highly-touted rookie quarterback in Joe Burrow, it’s understandable that the Bengals would have wanted to pass the ball more than run it. Still, even without the injured top pick, the team is well out of balance through 15 games, running the ball 392 times and attempting to pass it 608 times (including 48 sacks allowed). Cincinnati has scored 308 points and allowed 386, with deficits in all four quarters. The Bengals are doing best in the first halves of games, being outscored by only five points in the first quarter and ten in the second. But they are getting blown out after halftime, getting outscored by 24 in the third period and 39 in the fourth.
–On defense, the team has allowed 42 total touchdowns, including a staggering 29 via the pass. It has notched only 17 quarterback sacks and is allowing six yards per play. The sacks have come from 11 different players, but only one defender has more than two quarterback takedowns. But to their credit, the Bengals don’t commit many back-breaking penalties on third down and similar situations, having allowed only 25 first downs via penalty.
—Speaking of penalties, Cincinnati has committed 80 accepted infractions through the first 15 games, a total that is tied with Green Bay and Tennessee towards the middle of the league pack, and 18 fewer penalties than Baltimore has committed. The Bengals have been flagged for 22 false starts, one of only five teams to have 20 or more in that category; they have been called for holding only 12 times. Cincinnati is one of 13 teams with ten pass-interference calls to have a double-digit figure in that category. Individually, four Bengals lead the team with five flags each; cornerback William Jackson has five pass-interference calls against him. Guard Alex Redmond has two false starts and three holds, while rookie receiver Tee Higgins has false-started three times.
–In the Ravens-Bengals lifetime series, the team that wins the turnover battle is 33-5. On the leaguewide turnover table, the Bengals are standing at minus-6, with 16 giveaways on offense and 22 takeaways on defense. However, with only nine interceptions thrown by Bengal quarterbacks, Cincinnati is one of just nine teams with fewer than ten pickoffs having been tossed by its signal-callers. But the team has only fallen on six opponents’ fumbles all season out of 13 put on the ground, with safety and leading tackler Vonn Bell getting two of those. On offense, quarterback Joe Burrow leads the team with four fumbles, and receiver/returner Alex Erickson has put the ball on the ground twice.
—Through Week 16, the Bengals are ranked 28th in total offense (25th rushing, 23rd passing, 27th scoring at 20.5 points per game) but are averaging a respectable 31:35 of possession time per game, the fifth-highest figure in the league. However, Cincinnati’s third-down conversion rate and red-zone touchdown percentage are both the league’s third-worst. The team is definitely ranked 22nd overall (25th vs. rush, 23rd vs. pass, 20th scoring at 25.7 points per game allowed). The Bengals’ third-down and red-zone defense rank around the middle of the league’s 32-team pack, but the goal-to-go defensive rank has Cincinnati placed third-best. Since Week 11, Cincinnati has allowed only nine red-zone touchdowns in opponents’ last 20 trips, third-best in the league over that span.
—After former Ravens’ defensive coordinator Marvin Lewis spent 16 seasons at the helm of the Bengals, second in NFL head-coaching seniority to the New England Patriots’ Bill Belichick (19), Zac Taylor took over in 2019, one of six brand-new head coaches around the league that year. He is the tenth head coach in Bengals franchise history, coming to the team after serving as the Los Angeles Rams’ assistant wide receivers coach and quarterbacks coach under Sean McVay. Before that, he had been on the staff at the University of Cincinnati, where Ravens head coach John Harbaugh also worked early in his career. This will be Taylor’s fourth game against the Ravens; he is 0-3 versus Baltimore so far. Lewis was 19-13 against the Ravens.
–Taylor’s tenure is just beginning. But so far, the Bengals under him are 5-10 at home, 1-14-1 on the road (getting their first away win last week at Houston), 4-11 when scoring first, 1-15-1 when losing at the half, and 0-18 when trailing after three quarters. If all that wasn’t bad enough, the Bengals under Taylor are 4-19-1 when allowing 20 or more points and 5-24-1 when playing outdoors.
–-Rookie quarterback and Ohio native Joe Burrow took over the quarterback job this year after longtime starter Andy Dalton left the Bengals for the Dallas Cowboys. Burrow quarterbacked the Louisiana State Tigers to college football’s national championship last year with perhaps the greatest statistical season in NCAA history, earning him the Heisman Trophy. But in a Week 11 game against Washington, Burrow incurred multiple torn left knee ligaments and was pronounced out for the season after completing 65.4 percent of his passes with 13 touchdowns and five interceptions. He was sacked 32 times and played to an 89.8 passer rating.
–Burrow was backed up by 2019 fourth-round pick Ryan Finley (NC State), but the job now belongs to 2016 Jacksonville sixth-round selection (201st overall) Brandon Allen (Arkansas), who has also played with the Los Angeles Rams and Denver, as well as the Jaguars and Bengals. Allen has completed 69.4 percent of his passes with five touchdowns and two interceptions; he has been sacked seven times and has a 97 rating. He has the Bengals’ longest touchdown pass this year, a 72-yard bomb to Tyler Boyd. On Sunday, Allen will be going for his third straight game with a 95 or better passer rating.
—Fourth-year workhorse running back Joe Mixon has had a star-crossed career, to say the least. His draft stock was hurt due to domestic violence issues. He was then slowed in 2017 by an ankle problem and a concussion–not to mention poor blocking. He incurred a foot injury in Week Six, two weeks after being named an AFC Offensive Player of the Week, and was declared out for the season.
–Even though he has been out since October, Mixon still has more rushing yards than anyone on the roster. But veteran change-of-pace back Gio Bernard is close behind (428-409). Bernard also has 47 catches and two scores out of the backfield, and he had gone 829 consecutive carries without fumbling before doing so four weeks ago against Dallas; it is the third-longest streak in NFL history. Former Washington draft pick Samaje Perine and Burrow are next on the carries list; Mixon, Bernard, Perine, and Burrow have all rushed for three scores each, and Finley scored once on the ground during his limited quarterback duty.
—As usual, the Bengals aren’t lacking in quality passing-game targets, including newcomer Tee Higgins. A second-round pick (33rd overall) from Clemson is second on the team with 67 catches, a 13-yard average, and a team-high six receiving touchdowns; the team has 19 such scores. Higgins had four grabs for 62 yards in his only career game against Baltimore. However, there have been health problems with this unit. Standout receiver AJ Green has had a tendency to get injured and miss games against the Ravens; he missed his team’s last three games against Baltimore before returning this year and getting targeted once with no catches.
–Green also missed the second meeting with the Ravens in 2018 due to a toe injury, and the ankle ailment he incurred during training camp kept him off the field entirely last year. Green has 47 catches this season, third on the team, with two scores; in a 2018 home game against the Ravens, Green had three first-half touchdowns. Lifetime against Baltimore, Green has 53 catches, a 16.7-yard average, and nine touchdowns.
–Tyler Boyd, the University of Pittsburgh alum who memorably scored on a fourth-down play three years ago to knock Baltimore out of the playoff race, has taken over as the team’s top target with 78 catches, a 10.8-yard average, and four touchdowns. Boyd was inactive last week due to a concussion he suffered in the upset win over Pittsburgh two games ago. Boyd has 36 lifetime catches against the Ravens, averaging 13.3 yards per catch and two touchdowns. Third-year receiver Auden Tate is a 6-foot-5, 228-pounder who has flashed potential; he has 14 receptions. Slot man Alex Erikson was slowed by injuries last year and has just 11 grabs this season. At tight end, CJ Uzomah is out for the season (Achilles), and Tyler Eifert left in free agency, so the job has fallen to second-year player Drew Sample (38 catches, 8.8-yard average, one touchdown).
—The Bengals’ offensive line has undergone some changes in recent years. But it has still paced a rather bland running game, and it has allowed Bengal quarterbacks to be sacked 48 times. Second-year Florida product Fred Johnson came to the Bengals from Pittsburgh last year and has been an occasional left-tackle starter. Ex-New York Giant Bobby Hart is a right tackle in his third year with the team, and he can also play guard; he is one of only two starters returning to this unit from last season’s stretch run. The other is Trey Hopkins, who won back the starting job at center over former first-round pick Billy Price (Ohio State), now listed as a backup. The guards, left-sider Xavier Su’a-Filo and Quenton Spain on the right, are respectively in their seventh and sixth seasons. Veteran Alex Redmond lends depth at guard, but he started occasionally.
—In the past, Cincinnati used to be known for getting a great push to the pocket from its 4-3 defensive line, but it has faltered in getting any pressure this year. The team has just 17 sacks, with a team-high 5.5 of them coming from fourth-year defensive end Carl Lawson (34 tackles), four tackles for loss, two forced fumbles, and 31 quarterback hits. Third-year defensive end Sam Hubbard (unit-best 57 tackles, two sacks, ten quarterback hits, five tackles for loss, three pass breakups) plays the other side. He is an Ohio State product and a graduate of Cincinnati’s renowned Moeller High program.
–Since they entered the league together, defensive tackle Geno Atkins (eight Pro Bowls) and the since-departed Carlos Dunlap are the only teammates with at least 70 sacks each. Dunlap used to dominate against Baltimore, but sixth-year Christian Covington (33 tackles) has played in place of Atkins, who has not played this year due to a bad shoulder. The nose tackle is nine-year NFL veteran Mike Daniels, who played for Green Bay and Detroit before coming to Cincinnati.
—At the second (linebacker) level, Cincinnati lists only two primary linebacker positions and an overall 4-2-5 alignment, which is pretty standard these days in a passing-dominated league. The Bengals have had a revolving door at the second level in recent years, settling on a new tandem for this season, Germaine Pratt and Josh Bynes, the latter having spent two stints with Baltimore. Bynes, who made the final tackle in Super Bowl 47, is third on the team with 89 tackles, a sack, and five tackles for loss, while Pratt, a second-year player from NC State, has 80 stops (five for loss), breaking out of the gate with ten tackles against the Los Angeles Chargers in Week One. Logan Wilson has a pair of interceptions in a backup role.
—In a nickel secondary that is the team’s base look, the Bengals tried to upgrade by pairing ex-New Orleans safety Vonn Bell with Jessie Bates, the latter a second-round, third-year player. Bell and Bates are a respective first and second on the team in tackles with 111 and 99. Bell’s 111 tackles is a career-high and third in the NFL among safeties. In 2018, Bates (team-high 15 pass breakups, team-high three interceptions) got his first career interception against Baltimore in the Bengals’ Week Two home win; Bates also had seven tackles and two breakups in the game at Baltimore earlier this year. Bell’s addition relegated Shaun Williams to a backup role.
–The Bengals were aggressive in the free-agent cornerback market last offseason. They added nickel man Mackenzie Alexander (47 tackles, six pass breakups) from the Vikings. Veterans William Jackson (45 tackles, 11 breakups) and Darius Phillips (33 tackles, 12 breakups) man the outside spots; Jackson has one of the team’s four interceptions, but he is the only player to have run it back for any yardage (30). Phillips had a career-high nine tackles in Houston last week.
–When the Bengals visited Baltimore last year, kick returner Brandon Wilson ran back the opening kickoff 92 yards for a touchdown, the first time in 245 returns spanning eight years the Ravens had allowed a kick-return score. He traveled at a rate of 22.03 miles per hour on the play. Wilson is averaging 27 yards per runback this year, with the team averaging 25.2 per return, eighth-best in the league. Wilson has a 103-yard return touchdown to his credit this year. Fifth-year punt return specialist and backup wide receiver Alex Erickson had a concussion early last season. He has 21 runbacks, and 20 fair catches on punt returns, playing to a 9.8-yard average (11th-best).
–-The coverage teams are a mixed bag. The punt-coverage team allows 5.9 yards per return, the sixth-lowest in the league, and the kick-coverage unit yielding 23.1 per return, the league’s 19th-best figure. But that comes with a bit of a qualifier since only 18 kickoffs have been run back against the Bengals all year.
—Cincinnati’s kicking situation had been relatively stable until recently. The team started the year with kicker Randy Bullock, in his ninth season from Texas A&M (Baltimore’s Justin Tucker is in his ninth year from Texas), has hit 24 of 25 extra points this year, and has gone 21-for-26 on field-goal tries. But over the past three games, the team has turned to former Cleveland Browns kicker Austin Seibert, a 2019 fifth-round draft pick, who has converted five of seven field-goal tries and all eight extra-point tries.
–Punter Kevin Huber has been punting for the Bengals since being taken as a 2009 fifth-round pick (142nd overall). Just as punter Sam Koch, another late-round pick, is the longest-tenured Raven, Huber is the most senior Bengal on the roster. In 64 punts this year, he has six touchbacks and 18 coffin-corner kicks. He is gross-averaging 47 yards per punt and netting 42.7 yards.
Prediction
The Ravens have won four straight (averaging 37 points per game in the process) and now have the NFL’s best point differential (plus-130). And this Sunday, Baltimore can cruise into the playoffs with a win over the lowly Bengals. That’s an accomplishment, given what this team has been through, including injuries, inconsistency, and a COVID-19 outbreak.
But winning Sunday can’t be taken as a given, not with Baltimore’s losing record when playing on the Bengals’ home turf (9-15). Remember that Cincy has shown fight recently, beating Pittsburgh at home and Houston on the road in consecutive weeks. The Houston game was Cincinnati’s first road win in two years.
Still, though, the Ravens are better, and there’s too much on the line for Baltimore to relax.
Baltimore 40, Cincinnati 17
