The Bengals and Ravens put on an offense show on Thursday Night Football and the Ravens battled and won 35-34 to improve to 7-3. The. Bengals fell to 4-6 after the loss. Joe Burrow and Lamar Jackson lit up the box score. Joe Burrow finished with 428 yards and 4 touchdowns and Lamar Jackson finished with 290 yards and 4 touchdowns. It was an incredible effort from both of them. As great as it seems though, we also need to take these with a grain of salt. This says way more about the defenses of these teams than it does the offense. Both of them really need to fix that side of the ball before the end of the season.
After this game, I think it is safe to say the Bengals season is over. They definitely are still in the playoff race but they do not have the defense to actually be able to do anything in the playoffs. It is actually disappointing how bad the defense is for the Bengals this year. It is basically the exact same as last season and the defense was really good for them last year. You need defense to be able to get far in the playoffs. With the way the offense is playing for the Bengals if their defense can just flip the script and start playing better football, they can win it all. The problem is the issues they have on defense are not fixable mid-season. You can’t become a better-tackling team in today's NFL in the middle of the season. The Bengals also have communication issues between the defense and you cannot fix those either mid-season. A team that has chemistry and has played a season together should not have communication issues.
The Ravens are a really good football team. I do not think they belong in that top tier right now with the Chiefs and Lions. The Ravens have the exact same problem as the Bengals. Their defense is absolutely terrible. The strangest part is that they have one of the best rushing defenses in the NFL, but their passing defense is dead last. It is basically impossible to have that drastic split in your passing and rushing defense. The Bengals offense is good, but there are better offenses than the Bengals and it will catch up to them at some point. My main thing with Lamar Jackson is he puts up all of these big numbers against the rest of the league, but for whatever reason he just seems to turn into a completely different quarterback against the Steelers and the Chiefs. He still has to play the Steelers twice this season and he already faced the Chiefs. For whatever reason those two teams have completely shut down Lamar. Those are two teams that Lamar is going to have to face in the playoffs and I just need to see what Lamar can do against those teams instead of the rest of the league.
Before we finish this, the Bengals made a mistake not paying Jamarr Chase in the offseason. He is having an incredible season and his price is going to be a lot higher now than it was in the offseason. Now, we need more games like this on Thursday nights if we are going to keep doing Thursday Night Football. Incredible games like this make football way more fun to watch.
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