Oddsmakers don’t exactly think the Cincinnati Bengals will pick up their first win of the season on the road in Week 11 against the Oakland Raiders.
Fresh off a 49-13 loss to the Baltimore Ravens, the Bengals hit the road as 10.5-point underdogs against those Raiders, according to BetMGM.
No great surprise here. Lamar Jackson might be an MVP candidate, but the Ravens quarterback running wild on the Bengals was merely the latest disaster for the lost unit — after a bye week, no less.
The Bengals defense, or those in charge of adding to it, haven’t made much of an effort to correct the issue. The team cut Preston Brown, but he hasn’t seen significant time lately anyway.
And on the offensive side, Ryan Finley was responsible for 14 Ravens points in his debut and his rookie struggles don’t figure to simply vanish.
As for those Raiders, they’re winners of two in a row and at 5-4 have done a better job of escaping the plethora of offseason noise than some might have expected. Derek Carr has completed better than 70 percent of his passes and the ground game averages 4.7 yards per carry, so the Raiders figure to have a big advantage at home over the Bengals defense.
This was a theme last week when looking at the odds — the Bengals used to be a savvy underdog play, if nothing else. But until something changes, that isn’t the case here.
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