After a thrilling Thursday Night Football performance, the Bengals advanced to a promising 3-1 record after taking down the Jacksonville Jaguars at home 24-21. The Packers are coming off a 27-17 win at Lambeau against the Pittsburgh Steelers, but suffered a key loss in Jaire Alexander with a potential AC joint injury. This Sunday the Packers will be taking a trip down south into the jungle — which has become quite the home-field advantage this season — to take on this Cincinnati Bengals team with lots of momentum coming off of a near-perfect start to the season.

A Prime Opportunity

The Packers are definitely hurting coming into this game, missing starting left tackle David Bakhtiari, linebacker Za’darius Smith, receiver Marquez 

Valdes-Scantling, and now potentially a top 5 corner in Jaire Alexander. With all of these holes on the Green Bay side of the field, this would be a huge game for Cincinnati to step up and win. Going 4-1 heading into Week 6 against the Detroit Lions would be huge, and not to mention turning a projected loss into a win, which would also be a boost. On the less important side, this would also be a great game to show the national media that maybe this Cincinnati team is actually good this year. It seems like the narrative in the national media is always “the other team played really bad” never “Cincinnati played great.” Now is the time to change that.

Stopping The Aarons

Just like too many other games, the last Bengals and Packers matchup ended in an Aaron Rodgers miracle drive. The Bengals can not let that happen here. To win this game, the Bengals need to start strong in stopping Aaron Jones on the ground after somewhat struggling to stop James Robinson, Jacksonville’s running back on Thursday. On top of that, they also can’t get complacent defending Aaron Rodgers through the air. The pass defense added Trae Waynes last week after missing all of 2020 with a pec injury and the first 3 weeks of this season with a hamstring injury. Also, we should see the return of CB Chidobe Awuzie and safety Jesse Bates this week after both were listed as inactives Thursday night. This could be the first real test for the defense this year and this is not the right time to let the team down.

Finishing Strong

With Cincinnati’s bye game scheduled for week 7 this season, a win against the Packers this week and the Lions next week would be a huge momentum grab as well as a great record to have heading into the much tougher half of the season. In my opinion, with a record of 6-1 in the first half of the season, Cincinnati is set up for an 11 win season this year, which is way better than last year’s 4 wins. 

Predictions

Initially, I was going to pick the Packers to win this game, but with all of the injuries on their side, and all of the momentum on Cincinnati’s side, I am leaning towards the Bengals here. I think they can squeak by with a score of 30-27. I think this game will definitely be a battle of the offenses for sure, Burrow should have north of 200 once again, and Mixon might struggle a bit, but he should still have a decent performance overall. My only concern, other than the Green Bay offense, is the Bengals’ ability to finish this game, but if this team can stay strong I see no reason to count Cincinnati out of this game.