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Baltimore Ravens can’t lose to the Cincinnati Bengals and be successful

By Kyle Barber
Joshua Lindsey-USA TODAY Sports

"You cannot lose games in the NFL and still win." -Trent Dilfer

Oh yeah, he said that. It's even better how serious he is during the comment too.

You may be sitting there thinking, "DUHHH!" very loudly in your head, as I did, but it’s something the Baltimore Ravens have faced for three seasons now.

The Ravens have taken five straight losses to the Cincinnati Bengals. Baltimore also has not won a season series since 2012. In the last seven games Baltimore has only won a single matchup.

Losing to such a high degree is brutalizing on not only the win column, but the divisional standings as well. The Ravens are always highly competitive, and with this comes the battle for the AFC North crown. Unfortunately, dropping two games a year to your biggest threat to win the AFC North does not bode well.

Baltimore has favored well against the other two AFC North squads recently.

The problem though, as I've mentioned for the past three paragraphs, is consistently losing to Cincinnati. Which drags the Ravens down late in the season. This translates to giving Pittsburgh enough room to crawl back in, or helps to give the Bengals another AFC North banner to hang up.

The Bengals have lost key players to free agency this season, and with it comes a slightly weaker squad. This hopefully gets the Ravens over the hump. This also means the North title is up for grabs. If so, the road to the playoffs could finally be through Baltimore.

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