Joe Burrow sees an advantage in Bengals' daunting task
Playing on short rest in the NFL is a challenge. Playing teams in your own division is a challenge. Combine the two and you get an inescapably tall task.Joe Burrow and the Cincinnati Bengals will face it head on this Thursday night when they visit the Baltimore Ravens for a primetime game. The shortened week […]
Playing on short rest in the NFL is a challenge. Playing teams in your own division is a challenge. Combine the two and you get an inescapably tall task.
Joe Burrow and the Cincinnati Bengals will face it head on this Thursday night when they visit the Baltimore Ravens for a primetime game. The shortened week is going to impact availability for injured players, as well as practice time leading up to kickoff.
The latter might just be an advantage, according to the Bengals' franchise QB.
"Short week, it probably helps you a little bit," Burrow said. "We play 'em twice a year. We've played this group several times now, three times last year, once already this year, so we know them, they know us. And, short week, not a lot of time to put in a bunch of new stuff. So we've got what we've got."
The Bengals and Ravens are either best friends or worst enemies at this point, depending on how you look at it. Thursday night will be the fifth meeting between both teams going back to Week 5 of last season. That's five games in 404 calendar days, or one just about every 81 days.
This isn't baseball or basketball. That's pretty damn frequent for two NFL teams regardless of their inter-division relationship.
Burrow is 100% right. There's pretty much nothing either team can do this week that the other hasn't seen on film against them, and with less practice time ahead of time, there are no opportunities to properly implement new wrinkles.
That means preparation for what to expect can be streamlined, and quickly.
Perceived advantage or no, Burrow and the Bengals have struggled offensively against Baltimore over the past calendar year. AFC North games have a reputation for being slugfests, and that has been the case when these two clubs have met with mostly-healthy rosters.
Expect more of the same this week.
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