Bengals schedule gets much harder after soft start to 2021

At first glance, it would seem things are pretty simple for the Cincinnati Bengals in Week 6 — they face the winless Detroit Lions.

But it’s never so simple.

Those Lions might be winless, but they’re hardly playing like a winless club. And they’re the start of a brutal season-long stretch for the Bengals after an easy start to the year.

Over at PFF, the Bengals started the year with the 26th-easiest schedule through Week 5. That changes as of Week 6, where they’ll play the sixth-most difficult schedule the rest of the way — those winless Lions included.

For those keeping score, the Bengals beat the 2-3 Vikings in overtime, lost to the 3-2 Bears, blew the 2-3 Steelers out of the water, needed a furious comeback to beat the 0-5 Jaguars and lost to the 4-1 Packers in overtime.

The rest of the way? The Bengals still get Baltimore and Cleveland twice and have tough matchups against Los Angels Chargers, San Francisco, Denver and Kansas City teams on the schedule.

To their credit, these Bengals have put up a massive fight, no matter how dire a game has looked. The culture is indeed changed for the better. But at the same time, they’ve also had some amazing injury luck so far, too.

Strength of schedule metrics are hardly perfect, but it’s interesting to step back and look at the big picture — those three-point losses to Chicago and Green Bay in winnable games could be a major problem that comes up down the road.