NFL Super Bowl Picture as Wide Open as It's Ever Been After Bengals Beat Bills

Some years in the NFL, we have a pretty good idea who the AFC and NFC representatives will be in the Super Bowl by Thanksgiving. A team or two rampages through the league like Godzilla through Tokyo.

There is no Godzilla this year, especially in the AFC. There's no dominant team that stands head and shoulders above the rest of the league.

We saw that play out Sunday night in Cincinnati. A month ago, the Cincinnati Bengals were languishing on offense, while the Buffalo Bills looked like arguably the best team in the league. Now, after Joe Burrow lit up the Bills for 348 passing yards and two scores in a 24-18 Bengals victory, the Bills have lost three of five, while the Bengals are one of the hottest teams in the NFL.

The reason for that Cincy surge? Bengals quarterback Joe Burrow, who battled a calf injury earlier in the year that clearly impacted his ability to move around and scramble. Last week against the San Francisco 49ers, we saw the "real" Burrow again, and he told reporters after that win that he's back to 100 percent.

"I felt good today," he said. "I felt really good today. And that was really because all offseason I've worked on my athleticism and my running ability a lot. Just hasn't been something that I've been able to showcase. So, it's nice seeing hard work pay off."

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The Bills may have dropped to 5-4 with the loss, but counting out any team led by Josh Allen probably isn't wise. After all, the Bills posted a dominant win over the Miami Dolphins and their explosive offense earlier in the season. Those same Dolphins fell in Germany to the Kansas City Chiefs on Sunday, but Miami is 6-3 and can drop 30 points on an opponent in the blink of an eye.

Then, of course, there's the defending Super Bowl champions, who are 7-2 after beating the Dolphins. The Chiefs might not be the offensive juggernaut of years past, but as quarterback Patrick Mahomes said after the Kansas City defense put the clamps on Miami (via Charles Robinson of Yahoo Sports), the Chiefs defense is more dangerous than ever.

"I think they've got a chance to be the best defense in the NFL," Mahomes said. The fact that [the defense is] so good at all three levels, that they're deep—guys rotate in, and they can play. I knew they were going to be good, because you look at the end of last year, they played great football, and no one really noticed. I knew they were going to be good [because] we brought back so many people, so many young guys, and they were going to develop. The fact that they're all developing this fast, I don't know if anyone could have guessed it."

The Baltimore Ravens are also 7-2 after blasting the Seattle Seahawks in Week 9—the second time in three weeks that the team has blown out a first-place opponent. The Jacksonville Jaguars are 6-2 and have won five straight—four of which were away from home.

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The AFC is loaded with good teams led by elite quarterbacks, and that's just one side of the bracket.

The closest the league has to a giant lizard this year is probably the defending NFC champion Philadelphia Eagles, who outlasted the rival Cowboys on Sunday to remain the NFL's lone remaining one-loss team. With a 2.5-game lead over the Cowboys now, the Eagles are absolutely in the driver's seat in the NFC East. Philly ranks fourth in the NFL in total offense and second in scoring offense.

However, while you can call the Eagles the favorites in the NFC East (and even the conference as a whole), you can't call them prohibitive favorites. Not really.

Dallas gave the Eagles all they could handle Sunday, coming up inches short on multiple occasions on plays that could have swung the game.

While speaking to reporters after the loss, Cowboys head coach Mike McCarthy said that Dallas will learn from those near-misses and be ready for the Eagles when the two teams meet again in Week 14.

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"We feel great about our team," McCarthy said. "We need to learn from these mistakes. That's what these games come down to. You get into these types of games and even more so if you get into playoff football."

Also, while the Eagles are an excellent football team, they aren't invincible. The team's run defense is tops in the league, and the Philly pass-rush remains formidable, sacking Dak Prescott five times. But the Eagles are 29th in the league against the pass, allowing 257 yards a game. You can throw successfully against these Eagles. And with all due respect to the New York Jets team that handed Philly its only loss, Gang Green ain't great in 2023.

There are absolutely teams capable of dethroning the Eagles, including the aforementioned Cowboys. The San Francisco 49ers have dropped three straight, but that came after five straight wins, and San Fran is still loaded with talent on both sides of the ball and has had the bye week to get healthy. The Detroit Lions are 6-2 with an explosive offense, a quarterback that has played in a Super Bowl and a defense that is so much better than last year's iteration that it staggers the imagination.

But what really makes the 2023 season so fascinating is that while there are a handful of legitimate contenders on both sides of the bracket, not a one doesn't have a flaw.

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The Bengals can be thrown on and struggled mightily when Burrow was banged up. The Bills have been wracked by injuries defensively. The Ravens remain somewhat one-dimensional offensively. The Dolphins have yet to show they can beat a high-end opponent. The Jaguars are somewhat untested and got blown out at home by the Houston Texans. Even the Chiefs have struggled to move the ball through the air consistently—they didn't score a point in the second half in Frankfurt.

It's no different in the NFC. We already mentioned Philly's deficiencies against the pass. Dallas tends to come up short in the biggest moments—in addition to Sunday's loss they were blown out by the 49ers a month or so ago. San Francisco quarterback Brock Purdy has become turnover-prone. The Lions got pasted a few weeks ago in Baltimore.

Now, quite a bit of this will sort itself out. The 49ers still have two meetings with the rival Seahawks. The Eagles and Cowboys and Bills and Dolphins still have rematches ahead. So do the Bengals and Ravens. When the Chiefs return from their bye, it will be for a Super Bowl rematch with the Eagles. The Lions are at Dallas in Week 17. The Jaguars host San Francisco next week and still have meeting with the Bengals and Ravens on the schedule.

That's a lot of playoff previews. Opportunities for contenders to rise above the rest and battle for home-field advantage and a first-round bye.

But anyone who says nine weeks in that they know with absolute certainty who will be playing at Allegiant Stadium on February 11 is either lying or needs to be buying Powerball tickets.

Because Sunday night demonstrated once again that while the NFL is full of talented teams capable of a deep postseason run, there's no runaway favorite. The 2023 season is as wide-open as any in recent memory.

And that's glorious.