{"id":655853,"date":"2026-05-21T05:29:11","date_gmt":"2026-05-21T05:29:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/655853\/"},"modified":"2026-05-21T05:29:11","modified_gmt":"2026-05-21T05:29:11","slug":"nfl-explains-why-this-seasons-ravens-bengals-primetime-game-is-in-cincinnati","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/655853\/","title":{"rendered":"NFL Explains Why This Season\u2019s Ravens-Bengals Primetime Game Is in Cincinnati"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>NFL Explains Why This Season&#8217;s Ravens-Bengals Primetime Game Is in Cincinnati<\/p>\n<p>Last week&#8217;s NFL schedule release revealed that the Cincinnati Bengals would host the Ravens in a primetime game on New Year&#8217;s Eve after four consecutive years of the teams playing in Baltimore under the lights.<\/p>\n<p>It turns out last year&#8217;s primetime showdown at M&amp;T Bank Stadium on Thanksgiving was originally going to be scheduled to take place at Cincinnati&#8217;s Paycor Stadium.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Up until the last 24 hours, that Thanksgiving game last year was in Cincinnati,&#8221; NFL Executive Vice President of Media Distribution Hans Schroeder told <a class=\"nfl-o-cta--link nfl-o-cta--underline\" style=\"word-break:break-word\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/athletic\/7289366\/2026\/05\/19\/bengals-ravens-nfl-schedule-2026\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">The Athletic\u2019s Paul Dehner Jr.<\/a> &#8220;And we just saw something at the end when we tried to make the overall schedule a little bit better, including for the Bengals, it flipped it.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>After the 2025 schedule release, Bengals quarterback Joe Burrow said playing in Baltimore in primetime yet again &#8220;isn&#8217;t ideal. Maybe we can get one of those in Cincinnati next year. Please.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Schroeder said the Bengals&#8217; stance wasn&#8217;t lost on the powers that be.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We look at trends, has somebody played in a certain window in a certain time a lot?&#8221; Schroeder said. &#8220;What are things that just feel like they should be equitable over time? And we went into last year&#8217;s process like, look, there&#8217;s been a good streak of Cincinnati at Baltimore. Let&#8217;s look and try to solve it.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We went into this year saying it&#8217;s one of the things we do need to fix. It&#8217;s one of the things we should put our thumb on the scale and probably have a Thursday night that flips it a little bit so it&#8217;s a little bit more equitable between the Bengals and Ravens. \u2026 So we loved the idea when we saw it ending up on New Year&#8217;s Eve. We thought it&#8217;d be a fun way \u2014 in the Jungle in Week 17 \u2014 as a way to end &#8216;Thursday Night Football&#8217; for the year.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The Ravens have fared well in Cincinnati in recent years, albeit in afternoon games. They&#8217;ve won the past three meetings there, and Lamar Jackson is 5-0 as a starter in Cincinnati.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NFL Explains Why This Season&#8217;s Ravens-Bengals Primetime Game Is in Cincinnati Last week&#8217;s NFL schedule release revealed that&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":655854,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[63],"tags":[257,2593,2589,349,99],"class_list":["post-655853","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nfl","tag-general","tag-homepage-latest-headlines","tag-late-for-work","tag-nfl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/655853","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=655853"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/655853\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/655854"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=655853"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=655853"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=655853"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}