The AFC North is a carousel.
The league’s least decipherable division is a tangled mess of star players and flawed teams. Three different teams have stood atop its standings since Week 1. A Cleveland Browns win and a Baltimore Ravens loss in Week 15 would make it an even four for four.
The team with the best record inside the division (3-1) is the Cincinnati Bengals, who have gone from the top seed in the AFC to out of the current iterations of the playoffs after a 2-4 slide. The basement in the North is a 6-6-1 Pittsburgh Steelers team with a -50 point differential that’s closer to the 4-9 New York Giants than the 7-6 Browns. The division’s quarterback lineup looks like this:
- old guy who can’t throw downfield (Ben Roethlisberger)
- young guy who can’t throw downfield (Baker Mayfield)
- injured guy in the midst of his worst passing season (Lamar Jackson)
- young guy capable of greatness who leads the league in interceptions (Joe Burrow, more on him later)
That parity has left the North to chew through itself like a football ouroboros. The Ravens are 4-0 against teams that are .500 or better outside their division and 2-3 against the collection of weirdos spanning from the Chesapeake Bay to western Ohio. The Bengals are wonderful against Pittsburgh and Baltimore, who make up their only wins against teams with non-losing records. The outcome of every Browns game is governed by the observer effect.
It makes for compelling television and absolutely awful to predict football. Cleveland was a 2.5-point favorite at home against a Ravens team that beat them two weeks earlier and held serve. The Steelers are capable of getting swept by Cincinnati by an aggregate score of 65-20 but also beating the Bills and Ravens.
The AFC North promises nothing but chaos in 2021. Which rules, as long as you are not a fan of any of the four AFC North teams or, for the most part, betting on them.