Bengals' early bye week comes at ideal time during 2023 season
You can count the teams with better Super Bowl odds than the Cincinnati Bengals (+900) on one hand. The Kansas City Chiefs (+550), Philadelphia Eagles (+800), San Francisco 49ers (+800), and Buffalo Bills (+900) all have equal or better chances of hoisting Lombardi Trophy than the Bengals come February of next year. If the Bengals want […]
You can count the teams with better Super Bowl odds than the Cincinnati Bengals (+900) on one hand.
The Kansas City Chiefs (+550), Philadelphia Eagles (+800), San Francisco 49ers (+800), and Buffalo Bills (+900) all have equal or better chances of hoisting Lombardi Trophy than the Bengals come February of next year.
If the Bengals want the easiest path possible to that destination, beating three of those teams in the regular season would go a long way. The Chiefs, 49ers, and Bills are all on the Bengals' 2023 schedule, and two of those opponents are in back-to-back weeks.
Following their Week 7 bye, the Bengals will travel out west to face the 49ers in Santa Clara before coming back to Paycor Stadium to host the Bills on Sunday Night Football.
You'd be hard pressed to come up with a tougher meat of the season sandwich.
Cincinnati traditionally makes the trek out to San Francisco once every eight years due to NFL scheduling rules. Current XFL star AJ McCarron quarterbacked the Orange and Black the last time they were in Santa Clara when he was the backup to then-injured Andy Dalton.
The Bills are a much more common opponent for the Bengals, having played them twice once last year. Should the Bengals continue finishing near or at the top of the AFC North, they'll find the Bills on their schedule every year if Buffalo has the same level of consistent success in the AFC East.
Having to face both teams in one year is difficult; facing both in the span of seven days is daunting. It's a postseason-esque task for a team that has had ample postseason success over the past two seasons, and while the Bengals are gunning for a bye week in January this time around, they'll at least be afforded that luxury before this two-week stretch.
The Bengals' Week 7 bye is on the early side of the schedule. They'll play for six weeks before the break and play 11 more uninterrupted, which is a slight change compared to recent years. They've been granted a Week 9 or 10 bye in each of the last five seasons.
Theoretically, it's better to have a later bye so by the end of a potentially 21-game season, the split between pre-bye and post-bye is fairly even. If the Bengals make the playoffs as a No. 2 seed or lower, then they could play 14-straight games without a break before the Super Bowl.
If you needed yet another reason to seize the No. 1 seed, there it is. Defeating the Bills would help ascend the Bengals in the AFC race, and taking down the 49ers on the road would be a humungous boost for the back-half of the season.
There's also recent history on the Bengals' side. In the last two years, the club is 4-0 in the two weeks (2-0 in each year) following the bye, with three of those wins coming on the road. Cincinnati used to be an annual liability following the midseason break in action during Marvin Lewis' extended tenure. Zac Taylor has made that narrative, along with plenty of others, disappear entirely.
Increasing that streak to 6-0 would set the Bengals up for a promising second half of the season.
