The Cincinnati Bengals offense reversed course last week and sprung to life in a big way. They will attempt to carry that newfound momentum forward against the Detroit Lions today in week 7 of the NFL schedule in a battle of 4-2 squads whose records are better than their overall play. As a result of Cincinnati’s most recent win, their fifth in their last six games, they currently sit alone in first place atop the AFC North for the first time in four seasons.
To preview the turnaround, Andy Dalton entered last week’s game with a pitiful 82.9 passer rating that ranked him near the bottom of all AFC quarterbacks. With critics attacking him despite the team’s 3-2 record, Dalton responded in a huge way against the Bills by completing 26 of 40 passes for 337 yards and three touchdown passes. We’ll see if he can repeat that performance today when we watch Sunday Football online live streaming between the Bengals vs Lions by following the links below.
Not only has Dalton been struggling since week 1 but his top target A.J. Green has also not put up the kind of numbers we’re used to seeing from him. Last week, Green went as Dalton went and caught six passes for 103 yards and a touchdown. This combination is crucial for the Bengals success and will be closely watched today as we watch the game on CBS.
Cincinnati’s running game has also been picking up speed as rookie Giovani Bernard adjusts to the NFL and pushes his yards per carry average north. Through last week Bernard had tallied 73 yards per game on average on the ground, trailing only Eddie Lacy amongst rookies by three yards.
Defense hasn’t been a problem for the Bengals this season as they continue to rank in the top 10 by allowing 317.7 yards per game. Even with the strong stat sheet, the Bengals defense has been susceptible to late collapses and the Lions will be looking to take advantage of that in today’s game.
Detroits defense has thrived on turnovers by securing 13 of them thus far, good enough for a fourth place tie in the league. At 4-2, the Lions have already matched their win total for last year and hope their defense can slow down Dalton and the Bengals today. Look for DeAndre Levy and his four interceptions to be after a fifth. When the Lions get turnovers, quarterback Matthew Stafford and his offense have turned them into 34 points on the season thus far.
Today’s NFL Sunday Football week 7 game between the Cincinnati Bengals and Detroit Lions has a start time of 1pm EST / 10am PST and can be found on TV by tuning into CBS Sports (check your local listings for the channel number). CBS Sports offers limited online free streaming of the game via their website with analysis. If you want to watch the full game online, you will need to be a subscriber of DirecTV’s NFL Sunday Ticket here and ensure you have the Max package to gain access to the game through all the nifty mobile devices. This is a tricky game to predict who will win, so I’m going to go with the Bengals by two for no other reason than Dalton finally had a good game last week.
