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Watch Buffalo Bills (12-3) @ Cincinnati Bengals (11-4) on Friday Night Football, live on Sky Sports NFL from 1.30am early on Tuesday morning; Buffalo can seal the No. 1 seed with a win, while Cincinnati will clinch the AFC North division title if they win.
Last updated: 02/01/23 11:35
Joe Burrow and Josh Allen went it alone on Monday night in the AFC title game between the Bengals and Bills.
Monday Night Football might not look so good. Joe Burrow, Josh Allen, AFC battle, playoff implications, Super Bowl aspirations and two of the NFL’s most dangerous teams locking horns as a postseason appetizer in the penultimate week of the regular season.
“At the end of the day, people have to remember and understand, we’re the big dogs of the AFC and that’s what it is,” Cincinnati Bengals running back Joe Mixon tried to remind people after practice earlier in the week. “For whatever happens, it’s through us.”
A message received and understood, the Buffalo Bills may be compelled to speak.
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The Bengals, for all the early-season doubts and overreactions against them, are marching into the playoffs as they look to reopen after February’s Super Bowl defeat to the Los Angeles Rams. So yes, the AFC is debatable now, but on Monday they meet a 12-3 Bills team that is closing in on the No. 1 seed in the conference as a heavily backed favorite.
Cincinnati has yet to wrest the No. 1 spot from Buffalo or the Kansas City Chiefs, but knows it needs to extend its seven-game winning streak tonight to have any chance of reaching the first round.
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Highlights of the Cincinnati Bengals against the New England Patriots in Week 16 of the NFL season.
The subplot is a delicious first career meeting between Burrow and Allen as the two most important members of the NFL’s modern quarterback club, pursuing a rivalry that can be defined in the era of three together with Patrick Mahomes as the face of all the poor teams. for in the next person in the middle.
Both have redefined toughness with their own concepts, between Burrow’s ‘get hit, get back up’ resilience to Allen’s cinematic strength. He matched his incredible arm talent, off-script invention, command of the pocket and two of the most obvious cases of natural leadership in the league.
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Watch the best plays from Buffalo Bills quarterback Josh Allen’s incredible 2022 season
“We’re friends. We’ve hung out enough,” said Burrow. “Everybody who watches Josh, it’s no secret why he’s so good. He’s fun to watch, he’s running around. He’s making plays. He’s making throws that no one else can make. It’s fun to go against him.”
Where Burrow rallied from college irrelevance to produce heroics with LSU and reinvigorate the entire franchise, Allen made one of the most drastic leaps from erratic rookie to long-term MVP seen in recent memory.
“It was really cool to watch and see all the stories,” Allen said. “Went to Ohio State, transferred out, spent two years at LSU and arguably had one of the greatest seasons in college history. He’s got a heckuva story.”
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Highlights from the Buffalo Bills vs. Chicago Bears in Week 16 of the NFL season.
Burrow (4,260 yards, 34 touchdowns) and Allen (4,029 yards, 32 touchdowns) are both ranked in the top six for passing yards and touchdowns in 2022, while both sit in the top three in offensive yards and touchdowns that year. They are also fifth and sixth, respectively, in EPA/play (a measure of play-by-play efficiency) as the pilots for the Bengals offense ranked fifth in DVOA and the Bills offense ranked third in DVOA.
He beat the blitz while rubbing salt in the wound by disrupting the deep zone shell that rewarded his arm talent. Monday’s matchup could prove to be more Burrow vs. Leslie Frazier and Allen vs. Lou Anarumo than Burrow vs. Allen.
In the Burrow vs. Allen front page matchup comes Hakeem Adeniji filling in at right tackle for the injured La’el Collins against Gregory Rousseau, Logan Wilson blunting Allen’s outside pocket mobility, potential Tre’Davious White vs. Ja’Marr Chase. situation, the seventh-ranked Bengals rushing defense against the seventh-ranked rushing attack, and the second-ranked Bills scoring defense – which has seen that average value creep up over the last six weeks – against the Bengals offense that ranks first in the EPA / play and success rate over a seven-game winning streak since Week Nine.
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A look at some of the best plays from Bengals quarterback Joe Burrow.
Joe Mixon led the Bengals with 1,187 yards and eight touchdowns from scrimmage, but hasn’t been in the end zone since Week Nine’s five-touchdown game against the Carolina Panthers. The Bills flexed their own ground game in Week 16 when Devin Singletary (106) & James Cook (99) recorded season highs.
Through the air Tee Higgins spearheads Cincinnati with 1,022 yards and seven scores followed by Ja’Marr Chase’s 960 yards and eight touchdowns in four less games, while Stefon Diggs tops the Bills with 1,325 yards for 10 touchdowns despite managing only 120 catches and 123 yards zero scores in the last three outings.
And if you need more persuasion to tune in on Monday night… the Bengals and Bills’ combined 23 wins are tied for the most in league history coming into a Monday Night Football game – tied with the week 16 meeting between the Denver Broncos and San Francisco 49ers in the 1997 season. , the same year the Broncos won the Super Bowl.
Could we see the next Super Bowl winner on Monday night? It could be. It is simply impossible to predict exactly which of these two red-hot teams and shining QBs will find themselves drowning in confetti come mid-February.
Watch Buffalo Bills (12-3) @ Cincinnati Bengals (11-4) on Monday Night Football, live on Sky Sports NFL from 1.30am on Tuesday morning
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