2022 Week 5 Game Recap: Ravens 19, Bengals 17 (by Ross Jacobs)
This game is going to get lost amid some of the more exciting games/news of the week, but it shouldn't. This was two good, not great teams throwing everything they had at each other. The Ravens squeaked it out in the end but the Bengals had chances including a 4th and 2 where they were stopped short. It could easily have gone either way. Again, two good teams, solid but with flaws that keep them out of the elite group. It's going to be a close race between these two to see who wins the AFC North in the end. I'm putting my money on Baltimore as I have since the summer.
Fantasy Player Notes:
– A lot of people are starting to get nervous on Ja'Marr Chase (7-50-0/12). Please don't. He's fine. He was simply in an absolute war with Marlon Humphrey here and Burrow had very little time to throw as usual. Things will be better moving forward.
Tee Higgins got a big fat zero here which hurt a lot of people. He was limited all week and tried to play but was clearly still in too much pain. It's going to be something to watch this week although I'd expect things to be a little better. He should play but likely won't be at 100% just yet.
– Speaking of Burrow, the fantasy numbers haven't been massive yet but he's still averaging around 20 ppg even with the struggles. If they can get some things figured out he could certainly go higher. I've always been a big Burrow fan but my respect is growing every time I watch him. He really is Tom Brady 2.0.
The obvious issue for Burrow and the offense in general is obviously the offensive line. It's possibly even worse than last year if that can be believed. The Bengals went out and signed a bunch of retreads from bad offensive lines and everyone just jumped on board that they fixed the problem. I never understood that. Still, I didn't think it would be this bad.
– One positive sign is that Cincy finally figured out how to run the ball this week. They were doing some new stuff up front to try and create space and it was working. Both Joe Mixon and Samaje Perine averaged over 5.5 ypc here and it was clear the Cincy coaches were trying to use the threat of the run to get Baltimore to back off on the pressure so much. Early on the Ravens were crowding the line and receivers and Burrow had no time to throw, but once Cincy proved they could run the defense backed off and things opened up for Burrow a little more. I'd look for that pattern to continue.
If anything happens to Mixon it is 100% the Perine show. He looks fantastic, nearly as good as Mixon honestly. There would be no split between him and Chris Evans.
– Hayden Hurst has been on a hot streak lately. Can it keep up? Maybe. It helps having Higgins out. With the way the TE landscape looks I'd keep playing it until it fails.
– The biggest revelation from this game...Devin Duvernay (5-54-0/7, 3-24-0) looks great and more importantly the team seems to finally realize he's a really good player! He was clearly the top look for Lamar and they even were getting him involved in the run game with 3 carries, two of them sweeps and one was just a straight up toss play like you'd see Deebo do. Lamar just missed him on a 50 yard bomb TD and on another bomb a bit later. This could easily have been a massive fantasy game for Duvernay and people would be running out to get him.
If Bateman is out I think this absolutely keeps up and it might keep up even if Bateman comes back. Now that I think about it, Duvernay has been the guy Lamar looks to the most in the redzone. He's trusted. Bateman has turned into the deep ball guy for the most part. I want to see how this shakes out when Bateman comes back, but I suspect Duvernay is a bigger part of the team's plan than most of us know.
– JK Dobbins was still somewhat limited on carries but it's just the team easing him back in. He looks fine, just as explosive as he was two years ago. I'd expect his touch counts to go up slightly although it's hard to get too excited with Gus Edwards coming back soon.
Snap Counts of Interest:
63 = Chase
61 = Boyd
45 = Thomas
51 = Hurst
44 = Mixon
19 = Perine
62 = Andrews
23 = Oliver
15 = Likely
49 = Robinson
47 = Duvernay
18 = Proche
13 = Wallace
27 = Drake
26 = Dobbins
