Expert Picks Divided Ahead of Jaguars-Bengals Week 4 Matchup

Predictions from five major outlets split almost evenly on Jacksonville's Week 4 visit to Cincinnati, with every score forecast pointing to a tight finish.

Jacksonville arrives in Cincinnati for Week 4 fresh off a 35-6 dismantling of New England, and the league's prognosticators cannot agree on what happens next. A rundown of predictions from NFL.com, ESPN, USA Today, Pro Football Talk and CBS Sports — first published by Jaguars Wire — finds the pickers scattering to both sidelines in almost even numbers.

At NFL.com, the tally is 3-2 in Jacksonville's favor, and most of that panel expects a tight game with little separation at the end.

Bobby Kownack, one of the NFL.com pickers backing the Jaguars, cast Jacksonville's offense as far and away the best unit Cincinnati has faced this season. He cited the blowout of a New England team that won last season's AFC championship, plus Trevor Lawrence's early-season line of 616 passing yards, seven touchdowns, two interceptions and a 107.8 passer rating. Should the Bengals fail to contain that group, he wrote, Burrow and the offense would confront a daunting assignment against a Jacksonville defense allowing fewer points than anyone in the league.

ESPN's slate breaks toward the hosts, with two votes for Cincinnati and one for Jacksonville. The network's Football Power Index model sees it differently, handing the Jaguars a 54.6 percent win probability.

USA Today's crew reverses that split, going 2-1 for Jacksonville. Nicholas Brinkerhoff, siding with the Jaguars, catalogued a rocky Bengals start: Week 1 trouble with Tampa Bay even after forcing four turnovers, a Week 2 meeting with Houston that stayed tighter than it should have given the Texans' dormant offense, and a Week 3 defeat to a Pittsburgh team that produced no points across the season's first two weeks.

To Brinkerhoff, Jacksonville poses a wholly different problem because its offense can churn out points in bunches, and in a game this balanced he expects the head coaches to decide it. He gives the edge to the Jaguars' Liam Coen over Cincinnati's Zac Taylor.

Mike Florio of Pro Football Talk is the one listed forecaster attaching a scoreline to a Cincinnati choice, projecting a 28-27 Bengals victory. History drives his call: Lawrence has defeated every AFC opponent except Cincinnati, and last season Jake Browning took over after Burrow left with a toe injury and delivered the win. Florio added that if these Bengals truly resemble the 2019 LSU team, as Burrow has suggested, sitting at 2-2 would not be acceptable.

Pete Prisco of CBS Sports goes the other way at 23-17 for Jacksonville. He flagged Cincinnati's return home after a two-week road swing that ended with the Steelers loss, and while the Jaguars thumped New England, he views Burrow and the Bengals' passing attack as a far heavier lift. Prisco also questions whether Jacksonville's league-best scoring defense can maintain that standard in this matchup.

Stack the forecasts together and one theme emerges: nobody expects a runaway. The outlet panels break nearly even, the lone win-probability model tilts narrowly toward Jacksonville, and the two exact-score predictions — 28-27 and 23-17 — both land within a single score.