The Bills seek their seventh straight win and to keep hold of the top playoff seed with a win in Cincinnati on Monday night
In the world of talking-head football analysis, where quarterback matchups are all the rage, Josh Allen versus Patrick Mahomes has been a thing for multiple seasons at this point. Josh Allen versus Joe Burrow, however, will have its first chapter written in Week 17 on Monday Night Football.
Allen’s Buffalo Bills have not squared off against the Cincinnati Bengals since Week 3 of the 2019 season. Buffalo won that game, 21-17, but Burrow was in his final year at LSU at that point. The Bengals were quarterbacked by Andy Dalton that day, and fell to 0-3 as they matriculated toward the No. 1 overall pick eventually used to select Burrow in the 2020 NFL Draft.
Burrow’s Bengals have already been where Allen’s Bills are attempting to get to — the Super Bowl. When the two teams square off this week, it will be a clash of two AFC powerhouses, with the 12-3 Bills and the 11-4 Bengals vying for the No. 1 seed in the AFC playoff picture alongside Mahomes and the 12-3 Kansas City Chiefs.
Buffalo is a slim 1.5-point road favorite over Cincinnati, per DraftKings Sportsbook, and are riding a six-game win streak into Paycor Stadium — where the Bengals will put their seven-game winning streak on the line. If the Bills can pick up a win against this excellent Bengals team, their chances of securing home-field advantage and a first-round by jump to 86%; if they lose, those chances plummet to 15%. This is a huge game for both teams.
All of our Bills-Bengals coverage leading up to the big game is below.