Cincinnati needed 33 to beat Tampa Bay, and that is exactly the kind of game our model expects the Bengals to keep winning
Updated
Joe Burrow was upright in Week 1, and the Cincinnati passing game did what it does when he is. The Bengals beat Tampa Bay 33-27 in a game that was never comfortable and never really in doubt, which is the signature of this team, and when we re-ran the season with the result seeded in Cincinnati came out at 12-5 with a 92 percent playoff chance. In July we had them at better than twelve wins. The record is the same. The odds of a title slipped from eight percent to a shade under four, and the reason is that the rest of the AFC got better around them rather than anything the Bengals did wrong.
The offense is still a cheat code, and the projection still treats it like one. Our model has Burrow at 5,244 yards and 34 touchdowns behind a passer rating above 102, a touch below the 5,561 and 40 we had in the summer but still the most productive quarterback line in our numbers. Ja'Marr Chase projects for 127 catches and 1,579 yards. Tee Higgins sits at 88 catches for 1,284 yards and seven scores. Mike Gesicki climbs to 66 catches and nine touchdowns as the red zone answer. Chase Brown balances it with 593 rushing yards and 64 receptions out of the backfield. The team projects for 432 points, third in the league, and the third-most yards. No defense on the schedule solves that. Some will keep pace for a half.
The defense is where the Week 1 re-run tells a better story than the July preview did. Trey Hendrickson is gone, and in the summer we graded the unit 22nd and expected it to give up its share. After Week 1 our model has Cincinnati allowing 336 points, 11th in the league, and generating nearly 52 sacks, third-most in football. Myles Murphy and Boye Mafe each had a sack and a forced fumble against the Buccaneers, Murphy projects for nearly 14 sacks and Mafe for 13, and Dexter Lawrence, the summer's interior addition, adds ten from inside. Bryan Cook projects for five interceptions on the back end. That is not an elite defense. It is a better-than-average one with a pass rush that can end drives, and paired with this offense it is more than enough.
The math is the same math. Cincinnati does not have to win 17-13. It wins 33-27, and it wins those games because the offense scores on nearly every possession that matters and the pass rush takes one or two away from the other side. When we ran the rest of the season the Bengals were one of the four or five best teams in football, and the shootout against Tampa Bay was the template rather than a warning sign.
The division is the reason the title odds slipped. Baltimore went to Indianapolis and scored 41, and our model moved the Ravens from nine wins to eleven with the second-best scoring defense in the league. Pittsburgh beat Atlanta and projects for ten. The AFC North that looked like Cincinnati and then a gap now looks like Cincinnati and Baltimore at the top with Pittsburgh a step behind, and when we ran the season the Bengals finished ahead of the Ravens by less than a full win on average, a far narrower margin than we had in July. Those two games will decide the North, and the model has them as close to a coin flip as anything on the schedule.
The market opened Cincinnati around ten and a half wins, hedging on Burrow's health, and our model was a win and a half over it in July. It still is. The gap is a gap of belief, and after one week of a healthy Burrow going 25 of 35 and the offense putting up 33 the belief looks well placed. We are comfortable planting the flag again. The path to being wrong is the same path it has always been, and it wears the same jersey. If Burrow misses time, the drop to the backup is a cliff and the whole projection goes with him. That is the risk, and it is why the market is cautious. It is not a reason to build a projection around an injury that has not happened.
The next month is where the division gets decided early. Cincinnati goes to Houston in Week 2 against the most productive pass rush in football, then to Pittsburgh in Week 3 for the first of the two games that will define the AFC North race with Baltimore, then hosts Jacksonville, a team our model just moved to twelve wins, before a trip to Miami. When we ran that stretch, the Bengals were favored in all four, with Pittsburgh and Jacksonville the closest to coin flips, and a 3-1 start would put the projection right on schedule. The one to circle is Jacksonville, because a 12-5 team against a 12-5 team in Week 4 is the kind of game that decides seeding in January.
So we take the over on Cincinnati and mean it. The offense is the best in the AFC, the receiver room is the best in the sport, the pass rush is better than we thought, and the quarterback just showed up healthy and threw for 33 points. Baltimore is the problem now, not the defense, and that is a much better problem to have.
