Each team has rough patches during the NFL season. Sometimes those are brought on by the injury bug. Other times, it could be due to a hard segment of the schedule.
In this series, we will discuss the hardest 4-game stretches of each team’s schedule, going division by division.
Today, we find ourselves in the hard-nose football division of the AFC North. For how many hard-hitting division rivalries there are, there is a lack of those games on this list. Across the 12 games that will be brought up, only three of them feature an AFC North rivalry.
Let’s dive right into things with the easiest, hardest 4-game stretch for this division.
NFL Power Rankings, 2026: Every AFC North team's toughest 4-game stretch
4. Cincinnati Bengals Weeks 1-4
By far, that distinction belongs to Cincinnati. The Bengals play just three playoff teams during this stretch.
Hosting the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, heading to Houston, a divisional showdown in Pittsburgh and hosting the Jacksonville Jaguars will close out the opening 4-game stretch for the Bengals. Nothing easy will come from a divisional matchup, especially not an AFC North one.
However, the locations of these games are key for Cincinnati. Teams do not want to travel to Florida and play in open-air stadiums early in the season. As luck would have it, Cincinnati hosts both the Buccaneers and Jaguars in 2026. So, there is a dodged bullet there.
Going into Pittsburgh is never fun for a rivalry game, but you have to at some point every year. Probably best to get it out of the way early and have them come to you later on in the campaign.
A rowdy Houston crowd in September is not ideal, but considering three of the four destinations are preferred for the Bengals in this timeframe, it feels like a small price to pay for everything else to go in the team’s favor.
Add us as a preferred source on Google