Cincinnati Bengals vs. Buffalo Bills Preview & Prediction | PFF

Cincinnati Bengals vs. Buffalo Bills Preview & Prediction | PFF

The PFF Plus holiday sale is going on right now. Use the promo code holiday30 to get yourself 30% off a PFF Plus subscription. That means that you get everything. The grades, the premium stats, all of the fantasy tools, all the betting tools, all the draft tools. It’s everything a football fan could want year round. Holiday 30. That’s what gets you 30% off that year-long PFF plus subscription at subscribe.pff.com. [Music] Speaking of the Cincinnati Bengals, they’re traveling to Buffalo to take on the Buffalo Bills. Cincinnati is is very intriguing, Dalton, because they are two games in the win column behind the Steelers and the Ravens. And unless you feel like one of those teams is going to get the almighty tie, one of them is going to get a win, but one of them is going to get closer to where the Bengals are. The Bengals though are 3-1 in this division and they’re coming off a win against the Ravens. They play the Ravens then in week 15 after this and then they still play the Cleveland Browns as well. So, as crazy as it is to say, because it just it looked ugly for Cincinnati at the beginning of the year, with Joe Burrow back now, especially if the Ravens win this week against the Steelers, the Bengals have a chance to be 5- one in the division when all when things are all said and done and they will have they could have two wins over the Ravens as the tiebreaker there because it feels like it might be close down to the end. So this is a very very interesting matchup, but it’s also very interesting for the Bills now who are eight and four on the season and they just don’t feel right. It doesn’t feel like the Buffalo Bills that we have seen in the past, even at times this year that looked like world beaters. They have also been inconsistent. So which version of the Bills are the Bengals going to get this week? Talk to me about what you think we’re going to see from Buffalo this weekend. So, I I think the Bengals, they still have things they struggle with defensively, but if there is one redeeming unit on this team, it’s their cornerbacks, right? Dax Hill’s playing well. Um DJ Turner has been really good all season. Jaylen Davis has been good in the slot the last couple weeks. And when you look at the splits between how these two teams succeed in the passing game offensively and defensively, let’s go over the Bengals side of things first. Coverage grade against wide receivers, second best in the NFL. That’s how well these cornerbacks are playing on the outside for Cincinnati. Coverage grade against tight ends, they’re 29th. And against running backs, they’re 31st. You flip that over to the Bills offense, right? Tight ends sixth in the NFL in receiving grade. The Bills tight ends, but are they going to get Dalton Concaid back from injury this week, but Dawson Knox and Jackson Halls have been pretty good, too. Their running backs are 11th in the NFL in receiving grade, but their wide receivers are 27th. So, I know we’ve talked about this a lot before with the Bengals struggling to cover some of those interior receivers, tight ends, and backs out there, but it’s going to be the same theme. I think the Bills really need Dalton Concincaid back healthy in this game. They need to be able to attack the middle of the field and these linebackers because I think the one place where Cincinnati really has a decided advantage is their corners against the Bills wide receivers. And if this gets to be a game where the they can stop the run somehow and the Bills are in third and long situations having to force the ball to, you know, Gabe Davis and Khil Shakir and guys like that on the outside, I think that’s the one spot the Bengals could have an advantage in pass defense. But they have to find a way to not let Daltton Concincade, especially if he’s healthy enough to go, they have to find a way not to let him dominate this game. If they can do that, then I think they could actually hang around in the passing game on defense. It’s th this game is going to be fascinating to me because it is one where you don’t want to get too ahead of your skis, right? You don’t want even with one game that you were excited about that Joe Burrow was able to win for this team last week against the Ravens. You don’t want to say like, “Okay, yeah, now now the Bengals offense, firing on all cylinders for every single snap throughout the rest of the year.” It’s not quite going to be that. But there is certainly a lot to be excited about with the Bengals on the other side of the ball. Burrow hadn’t played in a long time. When you look at his first half stats last week, let me change the quarters to the first half because I looked up the second half specifically. He had a 60.3 passing grade last week in the first half, which included one big-time throw, no turnover worthy plays, but just a 60.3 passing grade in the first half. When you go to the second half, Dalton, 91.8 eight passing grade, three big time throws, no turnover worthy plays. Burrow got warmed up and even without T. Higgins, who still working his way through concussion protocol, he has a chance to play this week, but we’ll see. Even without Higgins, Burrow was the player that you wanted him to be. This was basically, you couldn’t have you couldn’t have dreamt a better first performance with him coming back from injury. 35% plus accuracy throw percentage last week was the best in the NFL in the second half. And that was for the full game. If you just go to the second half, Dalton, 66.7% plus accuracy throw percentage. That is nuts. A plus accuracy throw for everybody out there. It’s not just an accurate throw where you hit the wide receiver or the tight end or the running back in the hands and they have the ability to catch it. That means that you are putting true ball placement on your passes away from coverage where a even a tight defender won’t be able to affect the wide receiver bringing it in because that pass is that accurate or you’re leading them away from coverage allowing them to get yards after catch. 66.7% is insane. And that 35% leading the NFL for the full game puts that into perspective. And then when it comes to his uncatchable inaccurate passes, 8.3%, that was the second lowest behind only Bryce Young last week. So, I talked about this when we were going through the preview a week ago. I picked the Bengals over the Ravens because I said this, Burrow is not playing linebacker. He’s not making the defense better, but he is taking everything that Joe Flacco was doing to the next level specifically with inaccuracy. Joe Joe Flacco had some of the bigger throws. He had some nice plus accuracy throws to him, but the inaccurate throws from Joe Burrow or sorry from Joe Flacco were a much higher percentage than what you normally get with Burrow when he’s out there. He is one of the best quarterbacks in the world and I think he showcased that last week and especially in the second half. I wondered if we would disagree with this one or not. And feels like we both think that it’s going to be a very tight game because I see your final score on the sheet here. Bengals 31, Bills 30. So, a one-point game. I’m going with Bengals 30, Bills 27, but in overtime. So, I think that we’re tied at 27 going into overtime. So, I’m going to say an overtime win for the Bengals. You’re saying a one-point win for the Bengals? Yeah, this is a very hard game to pick with a lot of um with a lot of variables here, especially on the injury report. The Dalton Concaid and T. Higgins injury situations and whether or not they’re playing could make huge differences in this game. But if the Bengals are going to win it, they’re going to have to get in a shootout and I think it would become Joe Burrow versus Josh Allen. And it just feels right that the Bengals would keep their season alive for for another week, right? I I think when you talk about next week coming back here to Cincinnati having to play the Baltimore Ravens and then we find out what they’re really made of. If they were to get through this 3-0 stretch of Bengals or sorry of Ravens, Bills, Ravens 3 and 0 and then their final stretch I believe is Cardinals, Dolphins, Browns, then we really start to have a real conversation about the about the Bengals here and what Joe Burrow could do down the stretch. But I’m going to take it. I’m going to take it as kind of a wild result. I think we’re going to get a wild game from both of these quarterbacks. But the Bengals do need to stop the run on early downs to put Josh Allen in those down and distance situations where he has to throw it into the secondary. Man, Walt in the chat is saying that the Bills win easy. Saying they win easy. I don’t know about that, Walt. Not many games that the Buffalo Bills have won easy against really good opponents this season. And the Bengals got everything to play for. I think it’ll be tight. I think it’ll be a good one.

PFF’s Dalton Wasserman and Trevor Sikkema preview the matchup between The Cincinnati Bengals and The Buffalo Bills.

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