NFL Week 7 predictions: Considering Seahawks, Panthers, Patriots
Lorenzo Reyes shares his three best bets for Week 7 in the NFL.
- Joe Flacco won his first home start for the Bengals. Will it be the first of many this season?
- Cincinnati embarked on a three-game homestand, but will soon face the Steelers again.
- What about the Browns? Their decisions are expected to continue to influence the department’s results in 2025.
Week 18. January 4, 2026. “Sunday Night Football”. The match between Joe Flacco and Shedur Sanders entered primetime at Cincinnati’s Peyco Stadium with the AFC North title on the line.
OK, maybe this crystal ball is as accurate as Flacco was with his previous team. But after watching the Bengals’ new, interim, galvanized, gray-haired QB1 beat the first-place Pittsburgh Steelers 33-31 on Thursday night, ending the club’s most recent four-game losing streak, it’s already worth wondering: Will the lowly Cleveland Browns end up crowning the division champion?
Steelers coach Mike Tomlin has already given credence to the idea, and you could see it coming from a mile away during a rare lashing out Monday.
“Andrew Berry should be a lot smarter than me and us, because it just doesn’t make sense to me to trade a quarterback that you think is good enough to be an Opening Day starter to a division opponent that’s struggling in that area,” Tomlin said of Cleveland’s GM, who traded Flacco to the Joe Burrow-less Bengals last week.
“But that’s my personal feeling.”
And it was perhaps a little… personal?
Tomlin, who was hired by Pittsburgh in 2007 and is the longest-tenured coach in the NFL, has battled the 40-year-old Flacco for most of the past 18 seasons with mixed results. The reigning Super Bowl MVP has faced the Steelers 26 times in his career, including playoffs, and has won 13 times against Tomlin. The Steelers coach became more cautious Thursday night amid the new Flacco controversy.
“They did what they needed to do to win. They made more plays than us,” Tomlin said of the Bengals.
“I would be remiss if I didn’t give them credit. They fought off their tails.”
But do you think he and the Steelers wouldn’t have liked the chance to work Jake Browning, who is currently working his way back after Burrow suffered a toe injury in Week 2 after a near-disastrous three-game start?
Flacco is clearly enjoying this latest chapter with Pittsburgh and said Thursday night that many of his football war stories involve the loss to the Steelers.
“I have a lot of respect for Mike and our fight,” Flacco said with a smile on his face at the podium after the game. “I always find a way to play them. I love playing them.
“Playing against those guys, just the physicality and the energy was different than any other fight in my career.
“I have nothing but respect for (Tomlin).”
The problem here is that you irrevocably and possibly even disrespect the Browns! − Did you change the AFC North stripes in 2025? Consider:
▶ The Bengals appear to have some new life after starting a three-game homestand with Thursday’s win. Now they can enjoy a 10-day interlude before hosting the winless New York Jets at home, followed by the Chicago Bears. After a Week 10 bye, the Flacco-filled, Browning-less Bengals head to Pittsburgh, where they usually give the Steelers more problems than they do in Cincinnati.
▶ The Bengals’ schedule will feature games against Flacco’s former team, the Baltimore Ravens, in Week 13 (Thanksgiving) and Week 15, but Burrow could be close to returning by then… unless Flacco is a better option. Either way, there is renewed hope for both teams that they could be a relevant matchup.
▶ And to extrapolate this a little further, Cleveland will once again face every division foe this season, including the Steelers in Week 17 and the Bengals in the regular season finale. And while the Browns are rolling off the couch with a shot at making the playoffs in 2023, it’s clear Flacco won’t be at the helm after struggling mightily last month trying to run a limited offense. Moving forward, Cleveland will probably still evaluate rookie QB Dillon Gabriel and Sanders, who are probably the most high-profile players to not play in the regular season. still. However, owner Jimmy Haslam has expressed a desire to see Sanders play someday.
Did you understand everything?
Meanwhile, the Steelers will have to hope that 41-year-old quarterback Aaron Rodgers can stay upright and continue leading Pittsburgh to wins with dick-dunks. The Ravens are hoping that a roster with an incredible talent in two-time MVP Lamar Jackson can stay healthy enough to bounce back from an incredible 1-5 start to the season due to injuries. The Bengals, who finally finished 2-0 for the first time in the Burrow era, will have to hope he comes back — right? – to spark the high-powered offense he advocated before Cincy’s historically stingy front office bet most of its cap space on Burrow and wideouts Ja’Marr Chase and Tee Higgins being able to ultimately lead this 57-year-old franchise out of the jungle and into Lombardi Land.
Chase and Flacco already seem to have an almost instantaneous rapport, hooking up 26 times for 255 yards and two TDs, most of which came after Flacco’s first-half mulligan in Sunday’s Bengals debut at Green Bay. He’s still trying to make out some of the play calls while scrutinizing head coach Zac Taylor’s Oklahoma accent. But generally speaking? So far, so good.
“I hope we can come out here and play well,” Flacco said after beating the Steelers. “I think it gives us a lot of confidence to go out there now and do it the way we have the last six quarters, and hopefully we can take that over and use it to our advantage.”
He targeted Chase 23 times against Pittsburgh, more than the rest of Cincinnati’s players combined, hitting him 16 times for 161 yards and one score. Flacco gained 342 yards and three TDs through the air, but Cincinnati’s offense was unusually balanced as well, producing a season-high 142 rushing yards (so far).
“Honestly, it was amazing,” Chase said on Prime Video’s post-match set.
What about the Browns? Like their Week 1 starters, they don’t have a quarterback of their past. Their current quarterback hasn’t won a game yet. Their quarterback of the future could be acquired through one of two first-round picks in 2026. And Cleveland is clearly more motivated to trade a veteran like Flacco at the cost of upgrading next year’s sixth-round draft pick to a fifth-round pick than trying to win as many games as possible right now.
It’s an approach that’s already costing the Steelers money, and it could have further repercussions.
And Bengals fans know that, appropriately shouting “Thank you, Cleveland” after Thursday’s potentially season-saving win.
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