Conflict is what drives these previews. Not conflict of a world-historical kind (unless you have an outsized understanding of the Browns’ place in the world) and not necessarily the conflict between two football teams. Rather, you’re basically reading your author’s conflict over liking football but as often as not really disliking the way it gets talked about, thought about, written about, etc. So much of the way that the idea of toughness gets discussed in regards to the NFL, for instance, strikes us as morally odious, backhandedly cowardly secondhand machismo. Fans and pundits — and, to be fair, the game’s own idiot conventions — demand that players lug concussed brains around a football field, for instance, and rewards them with either dehumanizing compliments (he’s a warrior, he’s a killer, he’s a monster) or the murderously petty downturned thumb of a gladiator-match spectator. It’s ugly. But…

But there’s this: before Ravens S Ed Reed set a NFL record with his 108-yard pick-six in Week 12 — like, right before — he was sidelined with what was referred to after the game as a “soft tissue injury to the groin.” There is no way that the aforementioned soft-tissue injury wasn’t terrible. Even the euphemism is wince-inducing. So, yes, these guys are tough, they play through having all kinds of…things…get stomped on…and…OK, how about a new paragraph?

But the Ravens’ toughness this season transcends the ability to play with strictly nightmarish, um, soft tissue injuries. Baltimore is still no one’s idea of a scintillating offensive team — although it’s hard to argue with their 23.5 points per game, their best average since 2003 — but they’ve put together a gutty, gritty unit and run the ball very well. The defense, of course, is the team’s signature, and has been as dominant this year as it was during the team’s glory days half a decade ago. But while the defense accounts for the most eye-popping half of the Ravens’ most impressive team stat — that would be the fact that they’ve outscored opponents 77-3 in the fourth quarter of their last six games — having an improved offense is what makes Baltimore truly tough.

Cincinnati, on the other hand, are muddling through a season that’s basically been a series of wince-inducing groin-intensive soft tissue injuries, one surprising win, and a tie.
The Bengals have played harder than their rep would suggest, but they continue to lose defensive starters to injury — CB Johnathan Joseph and DE Robert Geathers were this week’s IR additions — and play without more or less any qualified starters on their offensive line. The left side of their O-line is currently comprised of an undrafted third-year guard and a fourth-round rookie, which shows both in the team’s NFL-worst sacks-taken total and some truly terrible recent rushing performances. The defense has played a bit better than expected, the offense a bit worse, but the Bengals seem to have reached something like the bottom this season, and don’t seem to have the personnel on hand to change that, in this game or in general.

They’re not in the same class as the Ravens — or almost any other NFL team — but these Bengals are tough, too, of course. They’re tough for going out there and getting whupped each week; for playing for non-guaranteed contracts in a league that has no compunction about throwing them away when they’re used up; for fans who hold them to crazy, inhuman standards of self-abasement. We salute them, and offer them a piece of advice: protect your soft tissues, please.

RAVENS BY 14