Going in a month’s time from the AFC’s 1-seed to out of the playoffs, Sunday in Cincinnati is Baltimore’s last stand.
WHAT: Week 16, Game 15 at Cincinnati Bengals
WHEN: 1 p.m. (ET); Sunday, December 26
WHERE: Paul Brown Stadium, Cincinnati (65,515)
RECORDS: Ravens, 8-6; Bengals, 8-6
LIFETIME SERIES (regular season): Ravens lead, 27-24; in Cincinnati, the Ravens are 10-15 against the Bengals, having beaten the Bengals on three of the team’s last four trips to Cincinnati. Also, the Ravens had won the last five overall games with the Bengals, regardless of venue, before a home loss in Week Seven earlier this year. Before that, the Ravens had lost five straight in the Queen City.
TV AND LOCAL RADIO: WJZ-TV, Channel 13 (Kevin Harlan, Trent Green, booth; Melanie Collins, sidelines), WIYY-FM, 97.9 (Gerry Sandusky, Obafemi Ayanbadejo, booth)
REFEREE: Clete Blakeman
About the Bengals
For their 52nd lifetime regular-season meeting with Baltimore, the Bengals will wear black jerseys and black pants (with orange stripes) for this year’s road meeting with the Ravens. This will likely put the Ravens in white jerseys and white pants, their traditional road look, although the pants could be black or purple. This year, the team redesigned its jerseys for the first time since the start of the 2004 season; the combination being worn Sunday has produced an 0-1 record so far.
The Bengals were born in 1968 as an American Football League expansion franchise and were 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-lowest 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 many home dates over the second half. Earlier this year, the game at Baltimore was 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 got to return home for five home games in a seven-week run, interrupted only by last week’s trip to Denver.
Despite not winning the most recent of its four AFC North titles since 2015, Cincinnati took over the division lead with a win at Denver while Baltimore was losing to Green Bay. The Ravens had led the division since Halloween. Both teams are 8-6, but the Bengals hold a head-to-head tiebreaker. Should the Ravens even the season series with the Bengals, the division-record tiebreaker comes into play. If the teams are even in that department, it goes to each team’s record within the AFC. After playing the Ravens and Kansas City at home, the Bengals’ regular season campaign ends with a short trip to Cleveland on January 9 in a game that could have significant playoff-spot bearing and could be flexed to the nighttime kickoff slot.
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. While this year’s return match is being played in Cincinnati, it is not the regular-season finale because the teams have often met on the season’s final Sunday, a strange-yet-frequent occurrence since intradivisional 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. 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 51 regular-season games against Cincinnati, which is tied with Pittsburgh for the opponent with the most such matchups with Baltimore. However, four times, the Ravens have also tangled with the Steelers in the postseason. They have never taken on Cincinnati in the playoffs, primarily due to the Bengals’ inability to become a playoff presence consistently.
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 and 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 34 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 23 meetings since 2010.
Naturally, these two teams meet twice yearly, in that they are part of the same division. The Ravens have registered eight sweeps over Cincinnati, including one in each of the last two seasons. This year, the Bengals won the earlier meeting and will go for their seventh sweep of the Ravens this Sunday; it would be their first sweep over Baltimore since 2015. The teams have split the season series 11 times, but none since three straight splits in 2016, 2017, and 2018.
Since the Bengals changed head coaches in 2019, the team’s roster turnover has been quite pronounced. Of the 52 active-roster players currently on the team, only nine were with the team before the coaching change, approximately 82 percent of the roster. Twenty-two current Bengals have joined the team in 2021 alone, roughly 42 percent of the roster.
-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. Paul Brown Stadium was 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.
Cincinnati is one of the league’s healthiest teams, with only eight on the injured reserve. It’s a big reason the team got off to a 5-4 start this year, which had to be encouraging enough given the team’s bottom-feeding history since its most recent of four AFC North Division titles in 2015. But it has won three of five since to take over the division lead with three games remaining as Baltimore lost its last three. The Bengals currently hold the No. 4 AFC playoff seed, while the Ravens are eighth in the conference, one slot below the postseason berths, after being the No. 1 seed three weeks ago.
This year, the Bengals’ wins had come by an average margin of just over 15 points, thanks in part to blowout wins over Baltimore, Detroit, Pittsburgh, and Las Vegas. As for the six defeats, four of them have come by three-point margins, while another had a 25-point margin (to Cleveland), with another loss coming by 19 points (to the Los Angeles Chargers). After playing the Ravens, Cincinnati still has games against Kansas City and Cleveland remaining.
Offensively, Cincinnati had been a much better-balanced club than at any time in recent years – that is, until recently, as a second-year quarterback, Joe Burrow, has gotten more comfortable playing deeper into the season after last year’s injury. Through 14 games, the Bengals have run the ball 387 times and passed it on 484 occasions (including 44 sacks allowed). Their average time of possession per game is right around the break-even mark, but the team does have 27 passing touchdowns against only 15 on the ground, using its stable of receivers for quick-strike short drives. That fast approach has helped the team score 53 points in the final two minutes of the first halves this year, fourth in the league. When scoring 25 points or more, the Bengals are 56-6-2 since 2011, the league’s second-best record behind New England. Cincinnati has also tallied 43 points on their opening second-half possessions, third in the AFC, and fifth in the league (Baltimore has 44).
On defense, the Bengals have turned around their scoring differential, having scored 369 total points and allowed 303, a much better margin than previous division leader Baltimore. Opponents have run the ball 327 times but been forced to pass 567 times (including 40 Cincinnati sacks allowed). Teams the Bengals have played have committed 96 penalties against Cincinnati, considerably more than the 58 the team has incurred itself.
Speaking of penalties, Cincinnati has played very clean football this year with just 58 penalties through 14 games, the fewest in the league. The Bengals are the only team in the NFL to have been flagged less than 60 times. The total is 33 less than the Ravens’ total of 91. Cincinnati has not been called for illegal contact all year and just six times for defensive pass interference; the Bengals also have ten false starts and 13 offensive holding calls, or approximately one per game. Individually, cornerback Eli Apple is one of only two Bengals with as many as five penalties, with four of them for pass interference. Center Trey Hill also has five, four holds, and one false start.
In the Ravens-Bengals lifetime series, the team that wins the turnover battle is 34-6; the Ravens posted a plus-one in the Week Seven meeting earlier this year but lost decisively. In 11 games when it was even, the Bengals have won seven of them. On the leaguewide turnover table, the Bengals are standing at minus-3, which is not good, but better than Baltimore’s minus-9. Cincinnati has picked off 11 passes and covered seven of 17 opponents’ fumbles while throwing 14 interceptions and losing seven of their 17 fumbles. The Bengals’ fumble recoveries have come from five different players, and the interceptions have been authored by six different Bengals.
Through Week 15’s Sunday games, the Bengals were ranked 15th in total offense (20th rushing, 11th passing, ninth scoring at 26.4 points per game). Cincinnati’s third-down conversion rate ranks 17th, around the middle of the league’s 32-team pack, but the red-zone touchdown percentage is 60 percent, tied for the league’s 13th-best. However, the team’s first-down-per-game average (19.3) is tied for the league’s 22nd-ranked figure.
Defensively, the team is ranked 15th overall (fifth vs. rush, 26th vs. pass, 11th scoring at 21.6 points per game allowed). The Bengals’ third-down defense ranks 16th, in the middle of the league pack, but the red-zone unit, after a hot start to the season, has allowed touchdowns at a rate ranking only 15th-best. Cincinnati’s defense ranks at the top of the league in goal-to-go situations, allowing touchdowns at a mere 54.5 percent pace. The Bengals are allowing 19.4 first downs per game, a figure that has consistently been good all year and the ninth-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. His current record with the team is 14-31-1. Taylor 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 sixth game against the Ravens; he is 1-4 versus Baltimore so far. For his part, Lewis was 19-13 against the Ravens. Taylor’s tenure is still relatively new, but so far, the Bengals under him still sport some rather poor situational numbers despite their recent improvement. With Taylor as the head coach, the Bengals are 8-15 at home, 6-16-1 on the road, 9-12 when scoring first, 2-21-1 when losing at the half, and 0-24 when trailing after three quarters. If all that wasn’t bad enough, the Bengals under Taylor are 6-26-1 when allowing 20 or more points and 12-31-1 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 68.7 percent of his passes with 26 touchdowns, 14 interceptions, 44 sacks, and a passer rating of 100.7. Burrow is averaging a gaudy 8.4 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. But in the Bengals’ 41-17 Week Seven win at Baltimore this year, Burrow hit on 23 of 38 passes for a career-high 416 yards, three scores, and one pickoff. He was sacked only once and played to a 113.5 passer rating. He averaged a season-high 10.95 per attempt that day. 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 and 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 1094 rushing yards (second in the NFL), a 4.2-yard average, and 12 of the Bengals’ 15 rushing scores (third-most touchdowns in the league). But he has had little success against the Ravens; in eight meetings with Baltimore, Mixon has averaged 3.3 yards-per-carry, his lowest against any opponent he has faced an appreciable number of times, along with two touchdowns and a meager 55-yard per-game average. Mixon has been a threat in the passing game. He has caught 18 passes on 22 targets in his career against Baltimore; for the season, he has 29 receptions, a seven-yard average, and two touchdowns, including a 40-yarder. Rookie sixth-round pick Chris Evans, who scored his first touchdown on a reception in Week Six, seems to have once again lost his job to former Washington Football Team back Samaje Perine as Mixon’s backup.
Tyler Boyd, the University of Pittsburgh alum who memorably scored on a fourth-down-and-12 play four years ago at M&T Bank Stadium to knock Baltimore out of the playoff race, continues to be one of the team’s top targets with 60 catches (second-most on the team), an 11.8-yard average and three touchdowns, including a 56-yarder. Boyd has 37 lifetime catches on 67 targets in his first ten meetings with Baltimore, averaging 13 yards per catch and two touchdowns. Last week at Denver, Boyd led the team with five catches for 96 yards. With the defection of AJ Green to Arizona, Cincinnati shored up its receiver room this year 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 team-high 61 catches, a 17-yard average, and ten of the team’s 27 receiving scores (spread out over eight different receivers), including a 70-yarder and an 82-yarder at Baltimore in Week Seven; that was part of a season-high 201-yard day. 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. This year, Higgins can boast of 59 catches (third-most on the team), a 14.4-yard average, and four touchdowns. Leading the tight end corps is CJ Uzomah, back from last year’s season-ending Achilles injury, who has 40 receptions (fourth-most) and five touchdowns (including a 55-yarder), along with a per-catch average just under 11 yards. Uzomah has two touchdowns in eight games against the Ravens.
Despite a running game averaging four yards-per-carry and allowing 44 sacks, the Bengals’ offensive line has stabilized rather well this year after several seasons of turnover. But one trouble spot remains–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 a game against Detroit and was benched. Fourth-rounder D’Ante Smith is facing arthroscopic knee surgery as well. The current incumbent is second-year man Hakeen Adeniji (Kansas), who has recovered from a torn pectoral muscle; he is a 2020 sixth-round pick (180th overall). 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 held steady in his seventh season after switching from right guard and Trey Hopkins returning at center. Former Minnesota first-round pick Riley Reiff took the reins at right tackle, but he is out for the season with an ankle injury; Fred Johnson, a third-year player from Florida who went undrafted in 2019 and signed with Pittsburgh before being waived.
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 55 tackles, 7.5 sacks, 12 tackles for loss, and 17 quarterback hits, while Hendrickson has the team lead with 13 of the team’s 39 sacks and 22 quarterback hits. He has also forced three fumbles and has ten tackles for loss. Hendrickson has an active streak of ten consecutive games with at least a half-sack, two shy of the NFL record held by Tennessee’s Jevon Kearse, who had 12 straight such games spread out over the 1999 and 2000 seasons. 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. The tandem is eighth and tenth on the team in tackles, having combined for 87 stops, nine sacks (seven by Ogunjobi), 14 tackles for loss, and 19 quarterback hits. Ogunjobi had 1.5 sacks at Baltimore earlier this year and has at least one in his last three games.
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 (career-high 15 tackles last week) is a 2019 third-round pick (72nd overall) from North Carolina State who has 82 tackles (the team’s third-most), five tackles for loss, and two fumble recoveries; he is partnered by first-year player Joe Bachie, a first-year player from Michigan State. Bachie is filling in for the injured Logan Wilson. It is 2020 third-round pick Wilson, taken with the 65th pick from Wyoming, who has been the defensive leader, with a team-high 90 tackles, a sack, and four of the team’s 11 interceptions. Wilson, who was inactive at Denver last week but could return for the Baltimore game, wears the ‘green dot’ on defense, enabling him to communicate with the coaching staff between plays. At one time, Wilson’s interceptions had him ranked first among NFL linebackers this year and second overall in the league behind 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 87 tackles rank him second on the team, and he also can claim five tackles for loss, five breakups, three forced fumbles, and a fumble recovery. As for Bates, he got his first career interception against Baltimore in 2018 and broke up two Ravens passes in a 2019 game. He is fourth on the team with 79 tackles.
Over recent seasons, the Bengals have been very aggressive in the free-agent cornerback market. Their current starting tandem is former New York Giants first-round pick Eli Apple and ex-Dallas Cowboys starter Chidobe Awuzie, who has missed recent action with COVID. Filling in for Awuzie is former Minnesota 2015 first-round pick (11th overall) Trae Waynes, a Michigan State alum. Former Pittsburgh Steeler Mike Hilton defected within the division to play nickel in Cincinnati. Hilton leads this unit with 53 tackles and six tackles for loss, while Apple has 41 stops and nine pass breakups. Hilton is the shortest and lightest player on the roster, measured at 5-foot-9 and 184 pounds.
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. Through 14 career games in Cincinnati, he has converted 37 of 39 extra-point tries, as well as 24 of 28 field-goal tries. He is 9-for-10 from beyond 50 yards. Last week at Denver, McPherson set a new Cincinnati team record with a 58-yard field goal. With one more 50-plus kick this year, he would tie the NFL rookie record held by Minnesota’s Blair Walsh. Also, McPherson is one 50-plus kick away from tying the single-season league record co-held by Walsh, Denver’s Brandon McManus, and Baltimore’s Justin Tucker.
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 56 punts this year, he has five touchbacks and 21 coffin-corner kicks. He is gross-averaging 47.1 yards per punt and netting 42 yards. Huber has 336 career coffin-corner kicks, fifth among active punters; Baltimore’s Koch is third on that list with 447. Sunday will mark his 204th game as a Bengal, third on the team’s all-time list, three behind all-time leader Ken Riley.
The Bengals’ punt-return team ranks 22nd in the league, while its punt coverage unit is the league’s eighth-worst. The team is slightly better at kickoffs, running them back at a pace ranking 16th-best and covering them at a pace that ranks 20th. The punt returner is four-year veteran Darius Phillips, a 2018 fifth-round pick (170th overall) from Western Michigan who is averaging 7.1 yards on 25 returns with a dozen fair catches and no return gaining more than 17 yards.
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. But they did allow another one this year to Minnesota. Wilson traveled at a rate of 22.03 miles per hour on the play. Wilson is averaging 22.4 per return with no runback longer than 44 yards this year.
Prediction
It’s an absolutely crucial game for both teams to settle the AFC North title and determine which of these two will play deep into January. Battered, bruised, and beat-up, Baltimore makes a last stand here with memories of a home blowout loss to the Bengals firmly in the Ravens’ minds.
Baltimore 24, Cincinnati 20
