Bengals' AFC North Foes at Surprising Extremes on List of Best, Worst Teams in Thursday Games

CINCINNATI – Weird things tend to happen in Thursday games, which is one of the mahy reasons why coaches and players hate them so much.

As the Cincinnati Bengals turn the page from Sunday’s 27-18 loss to the Green Bay Packers and begin to prepare for the Pittsburgh Steelers on a Thursday for the first time since 2008 – and just the third time ever – I wanted to see which teams have best handled the challenge of short weeks.

Since the NFL started playing Thursday games nearly every week of the schedule, there have been 233 games in which neither team was coming off a bye, making them true short weeks.

The list of best/worst franchises in those short-week situations can only be described as weird.

The best team in the league?

The Cleveland Browns.

Cleveland has won seven consecutive short-week Thursday games and is 9-3 for a .750 winning percentage since 2012.

The seven-game Thursday win streak is the second longest active one in the league, and it is tied for the fourth longest in NFL history.

Cleveland does not have a Thursday game this year.

The next best teams are ones you would expect.

The Buffalo Bills are 10-4 (.714) and owners on the longest active Thursday winning streak with eight in a row.

The all-time record is 11 in a row by the Indianapolis Colts from 2004-2015.

The Baltimore Ravens also are 10-4 (.714), followed by the Philadelphia Eagles and New England Patriots at 11-5 (.688) to round out the top five.

The Bengals are 6-6 and riding a two-game losing streak, with both losses coming at Baltimore in 2023 and 2024.

Cincinnati is 2-0 all-time against the Steelers on a Thursday, winning 27-10 in 2008 and 27-9 in 1995. Both games were played in Pittsburgh.

What might be odder than the Browns sitting at the top of the list is the team residing near the bottom.

The Steelers are tied for next to last at 4-10 (.286), tied with the New York Jets.

Only the New York Giants are worse at 4-11 (.267).

The Steelers have lost five of their last six Thursday games.

And they have lost four consecutive Thursday road games and seven of their previous eight.

With the Bengals riding a four-game losing streak overall and the Steelers sitting atop the AFC North at 4-1, Cincinnati head coach Zac Taylor isn’t shying away from the important of Thursday’s game.

“There's a lot of emphasis on this game,” he said. “We're coming off the stretch we've come off of. We want to win. We're hungry for it.”

For more on the Bengals, subscribe to our YouTube Channel.

Make sure you bookmark BengalsTalk.com for the latest Bengals news, exclusive interviews, film breakdowns and so much more!