NFL Heat Check
Team Heat Check: Cincinnati Bengals Run Hot, Miami Dolphins Run Cold (NFL)
Published
Ten games is not a season, but it is a mood, and moods decide a lot of games. The current mood around NFL: Cincinnati Bengals keep winning, Miami Dolphins keep losing, and everybody else lives somewhere in the weather between.
Burning up
Cincinnati Bengals own the league's best recent ledger at 5-0, and the +57 points margin underneath it says the record is earned. Per game the numbers read 25.2 for and 13.8 against, a gap that does not happen by accident across 5 games.
The chase belongs to Buffalo Bills, who have gone 5-0 with a +55 margin of their own.
Keep Baltimore Ravens in the conversation too, at 4-1 over their last 5.
The whole league is averaging 20.1 points a game in this stretch, which makes Cincinnati Bengals outrunning that number by 5.1 per night the loudest stat on the page.
Who's cold
At the bottom of the temperature map sit Miami Dolphins: 0-5 in their last 5, -77 on points margin. That is about 15.4 a game in the wrong direction, and no lineup shuffle fixes it overnight.
They have company at the cold end: Indianapolis Colts, 0-1-4 over the same window.
In between the extremes it gets crowded, Green Bay Packers at 3-3 and Kansas City Chiefs at 2-1-2 are basically sharing a seat, and the next series either way will split them.
At a glance
For the fuller picture, the five best recent records in the league:
| Team | Last 10 | Points +/- |
|---|---|---|
| Cincinnati Bengals | 5-0 (5 gm) | +57 |
| Buffalo Bills | 5-0 (5 gm) | +55 |
| Baltimore Ravens | 4-1 (5 gm) | +76 |
| San Francisco 49ers | 4-1 (5 gm) | +66 |
| Los Angeles Rams | 4-1 (5 gm) | +46 |
One more thing
Records fib a little and points margins fib less. When the two columns disagree about a team, trust the margin, it is the slower liar.
Next up on the slate: Cincinnati Bengals against Pittsburgh Steelers. Check back after that one goes final.