The opening weekend of the regular season saw an even split in the AFC North. It was a Week 1 full of close results in the division. Two teams, the Cleveland Browns and Baltimore Ravens, each lost by one point, while the Pittsburgh Steelers won by two points and the Cincinnati Bengals won by one point.<\/p>\n
In Week 2, the Ravens and Browns will face off in the second divisional contest of the year and the latter\u2019s second straight AFC North opponent. Meanwhile, the Bengals will take on another conference foe and the Steelers will play host to an NFC West squad.<\/p>\n
Baltimore Ravens<\/p>\n
The Ravens grasped defeat from the jaws of victory in Week 1, blowing a 15-point lead against the Buffalo Bills late in the fourth quarter. Baltimore dominated offensively for most of the game and kept the Bills at bay before watching a 40-25 advantage evaporate in the final few minutes of play. The Ravens went three-and-out twice with a crucial lost fumble in-between, a span in which the Bills scored 16 consecutive points.<\/p>\n
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Prior to this, the Ravens put up nearly 500 total yards of offense led by dynamic performances from Lamar Jackson, Derrick Henry, and Zay Flowers. Unfortunately, now the Ravens will have to pivot off a crushing defeat and aim to bounce back in a now-crucial matchup against the Browns. The Ravens have a significant talent advantage in this matchup which shows in the fact that they\u2019re favored by 10+ points.<\/p>\n
However, divisional games can always get wacky and the Browns know the Ravens well. Their starting quarterback especially knows the Ravens well, as Joe Flacco was the team\u2019s longtime starter for many years. This will be Flacco\u2019s first time back in Baltimore as a member of an opposing team, so emotions will be high.<\/p>\n
For the Ravens to have a better defensive performance in Week 2, they\u2019ll need to limit any explosive passing plays and key in on Jerry Jeudy and David Njoku. Causing more disruption rushing the passer and forcing turnovers are areas for improvement from last week, too. Offensively, limiting the game-wrecking ability of Myles Garrett, as per usual when facing the Browns, is the main priority.<\/p>\n
Cleveland Browns<\/p>\n
Like the Ravens, the Browns had a very good chance to win last week. They came up just short of an upset over the Bengals thanks to costly miscues. The Browns more than held their own overall, though, and especially played well defensively. They limited an explosive Bengals\u2019 offense to less than 10 total net yards in the second half of the game.<\/p>\n
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Their defense will need to be up to a tall task once again against the Ravens, whose offense is similarly dynamic and potent. Cleveland has actually won four of the past seven matchups with the Ravens, including a 29-24 upset at home last season. They haven\u2019t been as good in Baltimore, though, where they\u2019ve won just once since 2020.<\/p>\n
The recipe for a Browns\u2019 upset on the road would be to force turnovers and control the clock to keep the Ravens off the field as much as possible. If the Browns can establish the run and hit a handful of chunk plays on offense, while again holding up defensively, they could manage to make this a competitive matchup.<\/p>\n
The Browns did not run the ball well in Week 1, managing just 49 total yards on 24 carries. The Ravens have a much better run defense than the Bengals do, so they\u2019ll face an uphill battle trying to find more rushing success in this game. It\u2019s hard to get much worse than averaging just 2.0 yards per carry as a team, though.<\/p>\n
Cincinatti Bengals<\/p>\n
The aforementioned Bengals escaped another Week 1 disaster by narrowly defeating the Browns. While a win is a win and the Bengals are certainly happy to not be starting 0-1 once again, it\u2019s apparent from that game that they have much to work on heading into Week 2. The main priority will be getting their offense on track, in particular the passing attack, which is the engine of their team.<\/p>\n
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Burrow having just 113 passing yards and the wide receiver duo of Ja\u2019Marr Chase and Tee Higgins combining for five catches on nine targets is not a recipe for success. Nor is running 21 times for only 43 yards, which was Chase Brown\u2019s stat line against the Browns. The Bengals clearly want to feature Brown as a focal point of their offense but will need to do a better job creating running lanes and balancing their run-pass attack.<\/p>\n
They\u2019ll face an interesting matchup in Week 2 against the Jacksonville Jaguars, who are 1-0 after beating the Carolina Panthers by 16 points last Sunday. The Bengals should be able to find more offensive success against the Jaguars than Carolina did. Jacksonville\u2019s defense was a question mark entering the season, particularly their secondary, and the Bengals will certainly challenge their cornerbacks through the air.<\/p>\n
The Bengals\u2019 much-maligned defense was disruptive in Week 1 with multiple turnovers, sacks, pass deflections, and quarterback hits. Carrying that level of activity over in this next game will be key against a talented Jaguars\u2019 offense. If the Bengals can take the ball away from Trevor Lawrence multiple times, they\u2019ll give themselves a good chance to win.<\/p>\n
Pittsburgh Steelers<\/p>\n
It was quite a debut for Aaron Rodgers and the Steelers\u2019 new-look offense in Week 1. Rodgers was accurate through the air and delivered four touchdown passes en route to a 34-point outing. It was the type of offensive explosion in the passing game absent in Pittsburgh for awhile now that they\u2019ve been longing for.<\/p>\n
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On the flip side, defensively the Steelers were clearly a work-in-progress. Incorporating several new pieces into their secondary, the Steelers struggled to slow down Justin Fields and the Jets\u2019 offense. They allowed 182 rushing yards and four total touchdowns. It took a 17-point fourth quarter performance and comeback effort for the Steelers to narrowly win by two points, but alas they are 1-0 nonetheless.<\/p>\n
The Steelers will now return home to host a Seattle Seahawks team looking to shake off a slow offensive start in Week 1. The Seahawks are a defensive-first team led by former AFC North mastermind Mike Macdonald, with a solid front-seven and talented secondary. They\u2019ll give the Steelers\u2019 offense a formidable challenge and be a good test as to how much they success they can sustain from last week.<\/p>\n
Sam Darnold does not pose the same athletic and rushing threat as Fields, but he can push the ball downfield. The Steelers will need to key in on wide receiver Jaxson Smith Njigba, a rising star who is the Seahawks\u2019 clear No. 1 pass-catcher. Newcomers Jalen Ramsey and Darius Slay will be put to the test covering him and veteran Cooper Kupp as well. Stopping the run will also be paramount, which the Seahawks will surely try to establish early.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The opening weekend of the regular season saw an even split in the AFC North. It was a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":359887,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2054],"tags":[1586,1990,117,86,53,260,4132,256,85,54,2337,1081,9313,4131,292,7,125,1815,2827,226,562,493,895,1304,6,1551,57,1878,261,2978,582,2850,314,4648],"class_list":{"0":"post-359886","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cleveland-browns","8":"tag-aaron-rodgers","9":"tag-afc-north","10":"tag-baltimore-ravens","11":"tag-browns","12":"tag-buffalo-bills","13":"tag-carolina-panthers","14":"tag-chase-brown","15":"tag-cincinnati-bengals","16":"tag-cleveland","17":"tag-cleveland-browns","18":"tag-clevelandbrowns","19":"tag-cooper-kupp","20":"tag-darius-slay","21":"tag-david-njoku","22":"tag-derrick-henry","23":"tag-football","24":"tag-jacksonville-jaguars","25":"tag-jalen-ramsey","26":"tag-jerry-jeudy","27":"tag-jets","28":"tag-joe-flacco","29":"tag-justin-fields","30":"tag-lamar-jackson","31":"tag-myles-garrett","32":"tag-nfl","33":"tag-offense","34":"tag-pittsburgh-steelers","35":"tag-sam-darnold","36":"tag-seattle-seahawks","37":"tag-tee-higgins","38":"tag-the-browns","39":"tag-the-ravens","40":"tag-trevor-lawrence","41":"tag-zay-flowers"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":"Validation failed: Text character limit of 500 exceeded"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/359886","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=359886"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/359886\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/359887"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=359886"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=359886"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=359886"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}