No matter what NFL team you support, watching the Sunday slate of action with your team having already won is always a great feeling.
When a win puts one of your division rivals into a position where their playoff qualification odds are incredibly long, it’s doubly sweet for the fans.
Entering the Cincinnati Bengals at Baltimore Ravens Thursday Night Football matchup, the ESPN Football Power Index gave the Bengals a 29% chance of winning the game and a 32% chance of making the playoffs.
With the Ravens winning 35-34 on Thursday night, the Bengals dropped to 4-6 on the season, and their playoff chances are now much lower. The FPI, last updated on Tuesday, gives the Ravens a 99% chance of making the playoffs and 70% of winning the division.
Bengals club legend T.J. Houshmandzadeh, in an exclusive with RG, declared Thursday night’s game a must-win while also admitting to following his heart to predict a victory for his former team.
That prediction didn’t work out, and neither did his game plan for how to potentially beat the Ravens.
“The key is with Derrick Henry, this dude is a snowball coming down the hill and has 1,000 yards rushing in just nine games,” said Houshmandzadeh, who currently works as an Analyst for FS1, said in the same interview.
“For me, can they make the Ravens one-dimensional?
“We almost made them one-dimensional in the first game and Lamar said, ‘You’re going to make me throw the ball, I’m going to beat you throwing.’ I don’t know if that’s a good thing.
“It used to be that forcing the Ravens and Lamar to throw it gave you a good chance of winning. I don’t know if that’s the case anymore.
“The Bengals are going to have to be good top to bottom, they have to stop the run and they have to stop the pass. Because you can no longer say, ‘Let’s force Lamar to beat us with his arm.’”
While the Bengals’ 40th-anniversary team members had the right idea, it didn’t really come to fruition for them.
Yes, the Bengals did limit Henry (16 carries, 68 yards, 1 TD) and the Ravens as a team (99 yards on 25 carries) on the ground, but it simply wasn’t enough. Baltimore still had twice as many rushing yards as Cincinnati, so if anyone was one-dimensional here, it was the Bengals.
And while they put up astronomical numbers within that one dimension (QB Joe Burrow going 34-56 for 428 yards, 4 TDs, 0 INTs, and Jamarr Chase catching 11 balls for 264 yards and 3TD), the production of the visitors didn’t provide enough for them to pull off the upset victory.
Burrow had a monster game, but his passer rating (108.3) still wasn’t as high as Lamar Jackson’s (141.1). And while Houshmandzadeh had the right idea, it’s just much easier said than done.
The Ravens’ passing attack was just too strong.
Cincinnati came into Thursday night only one game behind Denver for the final AFC Wild Card slot, but they find themselves far behind the eight ball now. It is increasingly likely that the two playoff teams in the AFC North will be the Ravens and Pittsburgh Steelers.
