The Bengals are much better than they’ve been in recent years, but they aren’t at the Ravens’ level quite yet.
WHAT: Week Seven vs. Cincinnati Bengals
WHEN: 1 p.m. (ET); Sunday, October 24
WHERE: M&T Bank Stadium, Baltimore (70,745)
RECORDS: Bengals, 4-2; Ravens, 5-1
LIFETIME SERIES (regular season): Ravens lead, 27-23; in Baltimore, the Ravens are 17-8 against the Bengals, having beaten the Bengals on each of their last three visits to Baltimore, as well as in four of the previous five Charm City meetings. Also, the Ravens have won the last five overall games with the Bengals, regardless of venue.
LOCAL TV AND RADIO: WJZ-TV, Channel 13 (Kevin Harlan, Trent Green, booth; Melanie Collins, sidelines), WIYY-FM, 97.9 (Gerry Sandusky, Obafemi Ayanbadejo, booth)
REFEREE: Tony Corrente
About the Bengals
—For their 51st regular-season meeting with Baltimore, the Bengals will wear white jerseys and black pants (with orange stripes) for this year’s road meeting with the Ravens. This year, the team redesigned its jerseys for the first time since the 2004 season; the combination being worn Sunday has produced an 0-1 record so far. This will likely put the Ravens in purple jerseys and white pants, their traditional home-field 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 and begin play before it merged with the NFL two years later. They are currently playing in their 54th 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 53 completed seasons, tied with Atlanta, New Orleans, and the New York Jets for the seventh-fewest total in the league. It is only one more than the 13 playoff appearances logged by the Ravens, who are currently in their 26th season.
—Cincinnati’s postseason history includes nine division titles, with four coming since the AFC North was formed in 2002. The Bengals haven’t won the division since 2015. The Bengals have played in two Super Bowls (16, 23), losing both to the San Francisco 49ers in Pontiac, Michigan, and Miami. Still, they haven’t won a postseason game since after the 1990 season, despite a franchise-record five straight playoff berths from 2011-15. Since that run, the Bengals are 25-53-2 over the last five full seasons and 29-55-2 overall.
—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 (although 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 of 30 seasons is the longest active one in the entire league.
—This year’s Cincinnati schedule was top-heavy, with road games at the beginning. It will balance out with many home dates over the season’s second half. The game at Baltimore Sunday will mark the second in a three-game road swing and part of a five-road-game-in-seven-week stretch. After the team’s November 14 bye and a game in Las Vegas, the Bengals get to return home for five home games in a seven-week run, interrupted only by a trip to Denver. The Bengals’ regular season campaign ends with a short trip to Cleveland on January 9.
—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.
—In 2021, for the ninth time in 11 years, including six in a row at one point, the first of the two annual Ravens-Bengals games were scheduled to be played in Baltimore. This year’s return match is scheduled for Cincinnati on Sunday, December 26. The teams have often met 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.
—Since 2010, the Ravens and Bengals have closed the regular season against each other eight times, with six of those games in Cincinnati. The Ravens’ regular-season finales occurred in Cincinnati in 2011, 2012, 2013, 2015, 2016, and 2020, and Cincinnati visited Baltimore to close the 2010 and 2017 campaigns. Before the Week 17 mandate went into place in 2010, 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.
—Just as the Ravens’ five previous meetings with Detroit marked their fewest games against any team in franchise history, Baltimore has played 50 regular-season games against Cincinnati, which is tied with Pittsburgh for the opponent with the most such matchups with Baltimore. However, the Ravens have also tangled with the Steelers in the postseason four times. They have never taken on Cincinnati in the playoffs, due mainly to the Bengals’ inability to consistently become a playoff presence.
—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, as well as notching 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. It also marked the last time the Ravens lost a 14-point lead in a regular-season game and ended up losing the game before the same thing happened at Las Vegas in Week One of the current season.
—Baltimore has 27 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 team in the league, having beaten Cleveland 33 times and Pittsburgh on 23 occasions. Many of the recent meetings with Cincinnati have been close; the Ravens and Bengals have played to one-score final margins (eight points or less) in 14 of their last 22 meetings since 2010.
—Since the Bengals changed head coaches in 2019, the team’s roster turnover has been quite pronounced. As of October 19, precisely 38 of the 50 active-roster players had only joined the team since the coaching change, making Cincinnati one of the league’s youngest and most inexperienced teams. On top of that, 21 active-roster players – 42 percent of the roster – had never suited up for the Bengals in a regular-season game before the current campaign.
—Incredibly, the Bengals have won 11 consecutive coin tosses going back to last year’s December 13 game against Dallas, the last time Cincinnati lost one. The run began with a Monday Night Football game against Pittsburgh. This rather fluky stretch includes a pair of overtime periods, before which the Bengals won the coin toss in each of those. Except for the overtime tosses, the Bengals, like most teams, have deferred their choice every time.
—The Bengals’ wins this year had come by an average margin of just over six points before last week’s road blowout win at Detroit, 34-11. The two losses were by three points each, one at Chicago and the second at home against Green Bay in a game that saw the two teams combine to miss five field goals and an extra point.
—Offensively, Cincinnati is a much better-balanced club than at any time in recent years. Through six games, the Bengals have run the ball 162 times and passed it on 191 occasions (including 16 sacks allowed). Their average time of possession per game is right around the break-even mark, but the team does have 15 passing touchdowns against only three on the ground, using its stable of receivers for quick-strike short drives.
—That fast approach has helped the team score 31 points in the final two minutes of first halves this year, second in the NFL behind Cleveland (42). When scoring 25 points or more, the Bengals are 53-5-2 since 2011, the league’s second-best record behind New England. Cincinnati has also tallied 27 points on their opening second-half possessions, first in the AFC and second in the league behind the Los Angeles Rams (30).
—On defense, the Bengals have turned around their scoring differential, having yielded just 14 first-quarter points through six weeks and just ten points in the third period. Opponents have run the ball 141 times but been forced to pass 251 times (including 14 sacks allowed). Teams the Bengals have played have committed 43 penalties against Cincinnati, 14 more than the team has incurred itself. Cincinnati is second in the NFL, allowing a mere 5.1 yards per play.
—Regarding penalties, Cincinnati has played very clean football this year with just 29 penalties through six games, the third-fewest in the league, and six fewer than the Ravens’ total. Cincinnati has been called three times for defensive holding and three for defensive pass interference; the Bengals also have five false starts and seven offensive holding calls. Individually, cornerback Eli Apple is the only Bengal with as many as three penalties, two of them for pass interference.
—In the Ravens-Bengals lifetime series, the team that wins the turnover battle is 34-5. In 11 games when it was even, the Bengals have won seven of them. The Bengals are standing at minus-2, the same number as Baltimore on the leaguewide turnover table, with eight giveaways on offense and six takeaways on defense. The ball hasn’t hit the ground very much in games involving Cincinnati, as the Bengals have only fumbled twice (losing one), and their opponents have put the ball on the ground only four times (losing one). Game-changing plays have been made through the air, with the Bengals throwing seven interceptions and picking off five passes themselves.
—The Bengals are ranked 21st in total offense (20th rushing, 18th passing, tied for 11th scoring at 24.7 points per game). Cincinnati’s third-down conversion rate ranks 15th, around the middle of the league’s 32-team pack, but the red-zone touchdown percentage is 83 percent, the league’s third-best. On top of that, the Bengals’ goal-to-go offense has not failed to score a touchdown this year, and its red-zone unit is ranked third. However, the team’s first-down-per-game average is the league’s fifth-worst.
—Defensively, the team is ranked eighth overall (eighth vs. rush, 13th vs. pass, fifth scoring at 18.5 points per game allowed). The Bengals’ third-down defense ranks 17th, in the middle of the league pack, but the red-zone unit has allowed touchdowns at a rate ranking tenth-best, and in goal-to-go situations, Cincinnati’s defense ranks fourth. The Bengals are allowing 19.7 first downs per game, tied for sixth-best in the league.
—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, 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. Prior to 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 fifth game against the Ravens; he is 0-4 versus Baltimore so far. For his part, Lewis was 19-13 against the Ravens. Notable coaching-staff assistants under Taylor include senior defensive assistant Mark Duffner (Maryland head coach, 1992-96); assistant head coach/special teams coordinator Darrin Simmons (Ravens, 1998), the son of former Ravens strength coach Jerry Simmons; and offensive line coach/run game coordinator Frank Pollack, a Camp Springs, Maryland, native.
—Taylor’s tenure is just beginning, but so far, the Bengals under him still sport some relatively poor situational numbers despite their recent improvement. With Taylor as the head coach, the Bengals are 7-12 at home, 3-15-1 on the road, 6-12 when scoring first, 2-18-1 when losing at the half, and 0-21 when trailing after three quarters. If all that wasn’t bad enough, the Bengals under Taylor are 6-22-1 when allowing 20 or more points and 9-27-1 when playing outdoors.
–-Second-year quarterback and Ohio native Joe Burrow took over the quarterback job in 2020 after being the top overall pick in the draft from LSU, where he led the Tigers to the 2019 national championship. His rookie season lasted only until Week 11; in a 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.
—This season, Burrow joined Dan Marino as the only first- or second-year players to have at least two touchdown passes in each of their team’s first six games of a season. He is completing 70.7 percent of his passes with 14 touchdowns, seven interceptions, 16 sacks, and a passer rating of 107.9. Burrow is averaging a gaudy 8.8 yards per attempt.
—In his only meeting against Baltimore last year, Burrow completed 19 of 30 passes for 183 yards and an interception. He was also sacked seven times and could only compile a 66.4 rating in the Ravens’ 27-3 win. Burrow is backed up by 2016 Jacksonville sixth-round selection (201st overall) Brandon Allen (Arkansas). He has also played with the Los Angeles Rams and Denver, as well as the Jaguars and Bengals.
—Joe Mixon, the Bengals’ 2017 second-round pick (48th overall) from Oklahoma, has been one of the league’s most consistent dual-threat backs, with 480 rushing yards and a 4.3-yard average all three of the Bengals’ rushing scores. Mixon’s 111 carries are the league’s second-most. But he has had little success against the Ravens; in seven meetings with Baltimore, Mixon has averaged 3.1 yards per carry, his lowest against any opponent he has faced more than once. Mixon has been a threat in the passing game. He has caught 18 passes on 22 targets in his career against Baltimore; he has 13 receptions and a 40-yard touchdown for the season. Rookie sixth-round pick Chris Evans, who scored his first touchdown on a reception last week, seems to have recently replaced former Washington back Samaje Perine as Mixon’s backup.
—Tyler Boyd, the University of Pittsburgh alum who memorably scored on a fourth-down play four years ago to knock Baltimore out of the playoff race, continues to be the team’s top target with a team-high 28 catches, a 10.4-yard average, and one touchdown. Boyd has 37 lifetime catches on 67 targets in ten meetings with Baltimore, averaging 13 yards per catch and two touchdowns.
—With the defection of AJ Green to Arizona, Cincinnati shored up its receiver room with fifth overall pick Ja’Marr Chase, a teammate of Baltimore’s Patrick Queen on the 2019 LSU national championship team. Chase has proven to be a potent deep threat, with a 20-yard average and five of the team’s 15 receiving scores, including a 70-yarder. Chase, on throws of 15-plus yards, has a league-high 12 receptions and five touchdowns.
—When Burrow gets blitzed and throws to him, Chase leads the league with 273 receiving yards against the blitz. Chase has five catches of 40 or more yards, the most in the league, and he has 553 receiving yards in six games, the second-most by any rookie over his first six career games; only Anquan Boldin (592 yards in 2003) surpassed that total while he was with the Arizona Cardinals. Chase is the first-ever Bengals player to wear jersey number 1 and is the roster’s youngest player, born on March 1, 2000.
—Another national-title winner, second-year Clemson product Tee Higgins, was part of the Tigers’ 2018 championship squad. Higgins can boast of 18 catches this year, a nearly 11-yard average, and two touchdowns. Leading the tight end corps is CJ Uzomah, back from last year’s season-ending Achilles injury, who has 14 receptions and three touchdowns, along with a per-catch average of just under 12 yards. Uzomah has 12 receptions and a touchdown in seven games against the Ravens.
—Despite a running game averaging under four yards per carry and allowing 16 sacks, the Bengals’ offensive line has stabilized rather well this year after several seasons of turnover. Still, one trouble spot remains, namely, right guard. Cincinnati native Jackson Carman, a rookie second-round pick (46th overall) from Clemson, had the job until he had to go on the COVID list; he was supplanted by Trey Hill, a sixth-round rookie (190th overall) from Georgia who was beset with penalty problems in last week’s game against Detroit and was benched. Fourth-rounder D’Ante Smith is facing arthroscopic knee surgery as well.
—The rest of the line does have some continuity, with 2019 first-round pick Jonah Williams claiming his left-tackle job after missing his rookie year with a shoulder injury, left guard Quenton Spain holding steady in his seventh season after switching from right guard, Trey Hopkins returning at center. Former Minnesota first-round pick Riley Reiff taking the reins at right tackle.
—Part of the reason for the Bengals’ overall renaissance in 2021 has been the pocket-pushing presence of its defensive line, paced by fourth-year defensive end Sam Hubbard and opposite-side starter and former New Orleans unrestricted free agent Trey Hendrickson. Hubbard, a product of Ohio State and Cincinnati’s renowned Moeller High program, has 25 tackles, 1.5 sacks, and four quarterback hits, while Hendrickson has the team lead with 5.5 of the team’s 14 sacks and 11 quarterback hits. He has also forced a fumble and has four tackles for loss. Hendrickson has at least one sack in all three road games so far this year, and his 19 sacks since the start of the 2020 season rank third in the NFL.
—The middle of the Bengals’ defensive line has been populated in the recent past by stalwarts such as Carlos Dunlap and Geno Atkins. But as their careers faded, the team hit the free-agent market to shore things up, signing former Houston Texans standout DJ Reader and ex-Cleveland Browns starter Larry Ogunjobi, who has four tackles for losses among his 19 stops. As for Reader, he has three quarterback hits and a sack, one of seven different players with at least one quarterback takedown. In his fourth year from North Carolina State, BJ Hill, a former New York Giant, has three sacks in a backup role.
—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. In recent years, the Bengals have had a revolving door at the second level, with Germaine Pratt the lone holdover this season. Pratt is a 2019 third-round pick (72nd overall) from North Carolina State who has 29 tackles (fourth on the team) with three tackles for loss, a forced fumble, and the team’s only 2021 fumble recovery.
—It is 2020 third-round pick Logan Wilson, taken with the 65th pick from Wyoming, who has been the defensive leader, with a team-high 52 tackles, a sack, and four of the team’s five interceptions. Wilson wears the ‘green dot’ on defense, enabling him to communicate with the coaching staff between plays. Wilson’s interceptions have him ranked first among NFL linebackers this year and second overall in the league behind the seven pickoffs by Dallas cornerback Trevon Diggs.
—In a nickel secondary that is the team’s base look, the Bengals tried to upgrade before the 2020 season by pairing ex-New Orleans safety Vonn Bell with Jessie Bates, the latter a second-round pick and fourth-year player. Bell’s 38 tackles rank him second on the team, and he also can claim five tackles for loss, three breakups, and a forced fumble. As for Bates got his first career interception against Baltimore in 2018 and broke up two Ravens passes in a 2019 game. He is third on the team with 35 tackles, and Sunday will mark his 52nd straight game, marking every possible start in his career.
—The Bengals have been very aggressive in the free-agent cornerback market over recent seasons; their current starting tandem is former New York Giants first-round pick Eli Apple and ex-Dallas Cowboys starter Chidobe Awuzie. Former Pittsburgh Steeler Mike Hilton defected within the division to play nickel in Cincinnati. Hilton leads this unit with 24 tackles and three tackles for loss, while Apple has 22 stops and three pass breakups. Awuzie is the one who gets picked on the most, with six breakups and one of the team’s five interceptions; he has 20 total tackles. Awuzie is allowing a 70.7 passer rating when targeted, while Apple has yielded a 90.4 reading. Hilton is the shortest and lightest player on the roster, measured at 5-foot-9 and 184 pounds.
—When the Bengals visited Baltimore in 2019, 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. This year, Wilson is averaging 23.8 per return with no runback longer than 44 yards. The punt returner is four-year veteran Darius Phillips, a 2018 fifth-round pick (170th overall) from Western Michigan, averaging 7.3 yards on 12 returns with seven fair catches. The coverage teams rank towards the middle of the league’s 32-team pack.
—Cincinnati’s kicking situation had been relatively stable until recently. The team cycled through longtime veteran Randy Bullock and Austin Seibert last year before taking a chance in the fifth round of the draft and selecting Florida’s Evan McPherson with the 149th overall pick. McPherson set a Southeastern Conference record with the Gators by being accurate on 85 percent of his field-goal tries. He has converted all 17 extra-point tries through six games in Cincinnati but has missed three of ten field-goal attempts.
—Punter Kevin Huber, a University of Cincinnati alum, 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. Out of his 25 punts this year, he has three touchbacks and ten coffin-corner kicks. He is gross-averaging 45.9 yards per punt and netting 41.1 yards. Huber has 325 career coffin-corner kicks, fifth among active punters; Baltimore’s Sam Koch is third on that list with 435. Sunday will mark his 197th game as a Bengal, third on the team’s all-time list, ten behind all-time leader Ken Riley. Huber is the longest-tenured Bengal on the roster, but long snapper Clark Harris is the oldest player on the team at age 37.
Prediction
There’s no doubt that the Bengals are much, much better than in recent years. QB Joe Burrow seems a bit more polished than his young contemporaries around the league, and Joe Mixon is a good, dual-threat running back. But they won’t be enough to win this game. Burrow, like Herbert, will have trouble moving the ball, and Mixon has never had good numbers against Baltimore. On defense, an understaffed secondary will have a tough day covering the Ravens’ upgraded passel of receiving weapons.
Baltimore 31, Cincinnati 15
