Burrow lights out in second half as Bengals bully way past Ravens, 35-13

BALTIMORE — Bengals quarterback Joe Burrow orchestrated a second half come-from-behind win over Baltimore at M&T Bank Stadium on Sunday to keep Cincinnati locked up a tight AFC North battle in Week 7.Cincinnati put up 35 unanswered points in the second half and knocked off the Ravens 35-13 after being shut out in the first two quarters.Burrow was unstoppable in the second half.During that stretch, he completed 16 of 18 passes for 249 yards and four touchdowns.“I think I played really well,” Burrow said of his second-half performance. “I’ll go back and look at the tape, but in the second half I was pretty lights out.”In the first drive in the third quarter, he connected with Tee Higgins on passes of 19 and 10 yards before hitting Mike Gesicki on a six-yard TD pass to cap off a nine-play, 66-yard drive.On the next drive, he teamed up with Higgins again on a 19-yarder and capped off the six-play, 47-yard drive with a 13-yard touchdown pass also to Higgins.Higgins finished with 148 yards on six catches and one TD.“Great players make great plays,” Burrow said of Higgins. “He never surprises me with the plays he makes.”Historically, the Ravens have struggled with Bengals wide receiver Ja’Marr Chase, but they made sure he was bottled up on Sunday.This allowed Higgins to just run wild in the second half when the offense woke up from the bye week. Higgins is on pace for more than 1,600 yards.After the defense forced a Ravens punt, Burrow connected with Higgins who shook off a tackler and romped 44 yards.Samine Perine then bolted into the end zone from one yard out to give the Bengals the 21-13 lead.On the next possession, Burrow hit Chase who broke tackles and sprinted 30 yards followed by a one-yard TD catch for the 28-13 lead.Chase finished the game on Sunday with 62 yards receiving on five catches and one touchdown.Burrow was almost perfect in the second half and finished the game with 292 yards passing and completed 22 of 30 passes with four TDs and a passer rating of 143.3.The win was much needed and showed the Bengals have unlimited offensive potential, but it also showed vulnerability.After a bye-week last week, the Bengals struggled in the first half against Baltimore to find any rhythm and was shut out by the Ravens for the sixth consecutive quarter.Cincinnati was blanked 24-0 by Baltimore on Dec. 14, 2025.Following Cincinnati’s 22-17 win over Jacksonville on Oct. 4 at the Jungle, the team had a bye-week and almost two weeks to prepare for Baltimore (4-3.)In the first half on Sunday, the Bengals had 59 yards of total offense and Burrow was good for only 35 in the air.The Ravens outgained Cincinnati 258 yards to 59.In the first half, the Bengals were not prepared to play. They missed tackles and assignments.“We did a poor job on both sides of the ball,” Taylor said. “We did do a good job on limiting them to some field goals.”Burrow has been dropping hints all season that the team needs to be and can be great.A great team will make a comeback when needed, like it did on Sunday by overcoming a dreadful first-half performance and down by 13 points.But it can also be said that a great team will not put itself in a situation where it needs to come from behind.Following Sunday’s win in Baltimore, the Bengals need to be prepared to play from the start and not spot teams 13 points.“I was proud of the way our guys stayed with it and kept fighting,” Taylor added. “This (Baltimore) is a good football team. They have some great players, and the atmosphere is always tough here — really proud of the way our guys stepped up.”The Bengals are in middle of a dogfight and stand in second place in the AFC North, behind Cleveland and Pittsburgh, both at 5-2.According to ESPN’s analytics, the Bengals hold a 40.7 percent chance to win the AFC North – edging out Ballimore at 39.2 percent and the Steelers at 15 percent followed by the Browns at 5.1 percent.The game on Sunday also had a matchup that was set up as a “Trey Hendrickson Revenge” game, and it was it was Bengals’ linebacker Boye Mafe who made all the noise.The Bengals did a good job of keeping Hendrickson away from Burrow, often lending lineman Orlando Brown Jr. for help.Hendrickson sacked Burrow once and applied pressure two other times.The Ravens, on the other hand, were incapable of keeping Mafe out of the backfield. He ended up with two sacks and harassed Ravens QB Tyler Huntley in the second half.“Defense rose up,” Taylor said. “To keep (Baltimore) to 13 points in the first half and a shutout in the second really says something.”The Bengals will host Tennessee on Sunday and then head over to Madrid, Spain to take on the Falcons in Week 9.Will they be great, as Burrow says?