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Bengals To Play Ravens in Primetime on a Holiday Again, But This Time it's at Paycor Stadium

Make sure your New Year's Eve party has plenty of TVs
Jay Morrison|
The Bengals celebrate their victory after their game against the Ravens at M&T Bank Stadium on Thanksgiving Thursday November 27, 2025. The Bengals won the game with a final score of 33-14.
The Bengals celebrate their victory after their game against the Ravens at M&T Bank Stadium on Thanksgiving Thursday November 27, 2025. The Bengals won the game with a final score of 33-14. | Phil Didion/The Enquirer / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images

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Cincinnati Bengals

The Cincinnati Bengals will play the Baltimore Ravens in primetime for the fifth consecutive year, on Thursday Night Football for the fourth straight year and on a holiday for the second season in a row.

But unlike all of those other games, the 2026 tilt will be at Paycor Stadium.

The Bengals will play host to the Ravens on New Year’s Eve in the penultimate game on the 2026 Amazon Prime slate.

The game will mark the ninth anniversary of the Andy Dalton to Tyler Boyd game, when that duo hooked up for a game-winning 49-yard touchdown pass with 44 seconds remaining when New Year’s Eve fell on the final day of the 2016 regular season.

The touchdown pass knocked the Ravens out of the playoffs and made Dalton a folk hero in Buffalo, as the Cincinnati win ended the Bills’ 17-season player drought.

The Bengals were vocally critical of the NFL schedule makers last year when the NFL not only scheduled them to play a third consecutive Thursday night game in Baltimore.

And head coach Zac Taylor offered a wry reference to it in his news conference Tuesday afternoon, when he was asked if he would be surprised if the league  made them play at Baltimore in primetime again.

“I would be surprised, but (I’m) prepared for it if that’s what they choose to do to us for the fifth straight year,” he said.

The Ravens haven’t played a primetime game in Cincinnati since 2018, a 20-0 Baltimore victory on Thursday Night Football in Week 2.

Under previous head coach John Harbaugh, the Ravens were 22-8 in home primetime games. That .733 winning percentage ranked second only to the Patriots (26-9, .743) in that span.

Under Taylor, the Bengals have played almost twice as many of their primetime games on the road (13) as they have at home (seven).

And they’ve played four times as many AFC North primetime games on the road (eight) as they have at home (two).

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But the game marked Joe Burrow’s return from toe surgery, and Cincinnati ended its three-game losing streak at M&T Bank Stadium with a 32-14 triumph.

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Jay Morrison
JAY MORRISON

Jay Morrison covers the Cincinnati Bengals for Bengals On SI. He has been writing about the NFL for nearly three decades. Combining a passion for stats and storytelling, Jay takes readers beyond the field for a unique look at the game and the people who play it. Prior to joining Bengals on SI, Jay covered the Cincinnati Bengals beat for The Athletic, the Dayton Daily News and Pro Football Network.