It is the nature of an overreaction column that you have to correct yourself from week to week. You might recall last week, one of our declarations was that "the Bengals are AFC North favorites," and I said it was not an overreaction, because they'd just waxed the Ravens to move into a first-place tie in the division.
Then came Week 8, and -- sorry, Bengals fans -- we need to take the column in the opposite direction. Just the way overreactions work. Not much I can do about it. Here we go:
The Bengals are pretenders, not contenders
The no-contest most inexcusable loss of the day was Cincinnati's 34-31 defeat to a Jets team that was starting its backup quarterback and without its best receiver.