It’s really hard to say whether the Cincinnati Bengals actually benefit from having their Week 16 game against the Cleveland Browns flexed.
The NFL moved the Bengals off the Thursday night primetime game in Week 16, shifting them to a typical Sunday afternoon slot that week.
On the one hand, one of the big sour talking points entering the season was the fact that starting in Week 14, the team had to play three games in a roughly 10-day span. They had a Monday night game on December 9, a Sunday game on December 15, and then a Thursday game on December 19. That’s now gone.
But it comes with a catch, as pointed out by The Athletic’s Paul Dehner Jr.: “Also, includes the fact they give up an AFC North home TNF game which has been insanely tough on road teams for almost a decade. Nine straight wins for home team dating back to 2015 and twice this year.”
At 4-7 and pretty much every game on the schedule needing to be a win from this point, maybe the Bengals would have preferred to keep the 10-day crunch and that serious dose of home-field advantage.
This is especially the case against an AFC North team like the Browns, who seem to have new life after upsetting Pittsburgh in Week 12.
As always, all of this is moot if the Bengals could actually close out wins. But if they could, they wouldn’t be 4-7, need a perfect close to the season and have conversations like this at all.
