Ravens at Bengals: Highlights, score and recap

The Ravens and Bengals opened up the season together in Cincinnati on Sunday, and the Ravens put on a defensive clinic. Here are the highlights.

The Baltimore Ravens had a ton of questions coming into the 2017 season, but they put away any doubts in their season opener against the Cincinnati Bengals on the road on Sunday with a 20-0 win to begin the year.

Although Joe Flacco only completed nine passes on 17 attempts, that’s all the team needed offensively with how well they played on the defensive side of the ball. The Ravens defense forced Andy Dalton to turn the ball over five times with a nice balance of fumbles and interceptions to give Dalton and the Bengals fits on offense.

In the end, it was an absolute blowout for the Ravens, and they put on a show to head into Week 2 tied for first place with the Pittsburgh Steelers, and they have a lot of highlights to watch as they get ready for their next game.

Three Stars

1. Terrell Suggs

Suggs was all over the place for the Ravens defense on Sunday, and gave Dalton some serious trouble all day as he attempted to bring the Bengals back from their deficit in the first half. Add in a strip sack and fumble on Dalton from T-Sizzle, and the veteran showed he isn’t going anywhere on the Ravens defense, and could be in for a big year.

2. Jeremy Maclin

Maclin showed why he was brought to the Ravens this offseason in his first game for the team, as he scored a 50-yard touchdown in his debut, and did all of the work on the play after a quick slant pass from Flacco. Having a guy like Maclin in your lineup makes it easy to be a quarterback, and he helped pick up the slack from an injured Flacco that couldn’t throw many bombs, which will turn out to be a key addition this year.

3. Lardarius Webb

You could put pretty much anyone on the Ravens defense on this list and it would make sense, but Webb had a nice little dagger in the second quarter for the Ravens with an interception on a tipped pass from Dalton, and helped set the tone defensively for the team to open the year. He was all over the place, much like Suggs, and he’ll be a star defensively if he keeps this up.

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Odds

The Bengals were favored -2.5, according to SportsBook Review, and their performance offensively didn’t match up to what anyone expected from this game as they looked ahead to this matchup on the Week 1 schedule.

Next Week

The Ravens will get another divisional battle on their schedule with the Cleveland Browns heading into next week and will get a chance to play at home after their road win, while the Bengals will play the Houston Texans at home to try and make up for this performance in front of the hometown fans this week.