Through two weeks, the Bengals are 0-2 despite being priced as heavy favorites in each of their first two games. The Jets have been big underdogs in each of their first two contests and, thanks to last week’s miracle, own a 1-1 record entering these teams’ NFL Week 3 clash.

Naturally, both teams are in familiar roles once again on Sunday, with Cincinnati dealing as a sizable road favorite at BetMGM for the second straight week. That hasn’t worked out well for Joe Burrow and co. thus far – will this time be different?

Here’s how we’re betting Sunday’s contest, which kicks off at 1 p.m. ET on CBS.

It’s tough to place too much faith in either of these teams after an uneven couple of weeks for both sides. The Bengals have been arguably the biggest disappointment in the entire league after dropping a pair of winnable games, while the Jets looked overmatched for 58 minutes last week before pulling off a seemingly impossible comeback.

Still, it’s hard to know exactly what we’ll get from either side in Sunday’s tilt, which oddsmakers are seemingly pricing based on preseason priors. We do know one thing: points are likely to be at a premium.

Cincinnati’s offense is in serious trouble, and it’ll take more than one week to fix it. The Bengals scored 20 points in 70 minutes in an ugly Week 1 loss to the Steelers, who forced five turnovers in an embarrassing display for the defending AFC champions. Even if you wanted to write that off as turnover luck, it’s hard to explain last week’s 20-17 loss to the Cowboys, in which Cincinnati totaled 254 yards and finished 6-of-17 on third down.

There’s a simple but frustrating answer to it all: the Bengals can’t go deep. Burrow and longtime teammate Ja’Marr Chase connected for a ridiculous 1,429 yards and 13 touchdowns in 16 games together in 2021, with 759 yards across their final six games in the regular season and postseason. Much of that came on perfectly thrown deep balls behind the secondary, which was also their formula for exploiting overmatched defenses in their days at LSU.

This year? Chase has just 183 yards in two games, and he has zero receptions of 25 yards or longer. Burrow doesn’t have a completion of that long, either, as defenses have attacked this Bengals offense with a heavy dose of Cover-2 looks and taken away the deep ball from an offense that thrived on it a season ago. It’s rendered this unit toothless through two games, and the third-year QB hasn’t been able to adjust.

Jets coach Robert Saleh is one of the brightest defensive minds in football, and while the Jets are traditionally a Cover 3 team, I’d expect New York to bombard Cincinnati’s struggling offensive line and bait Burrow into risky throws down the field. The best way to attack these Jets is on the ground, and the Bengals simply haven’t proven themselves as a competent rushing team thanks in large part to their issues up front.

As for New York’s offense? Well, that’s a problem too. The Jets scored nine points in their season opener and had just 17 points through the first 58 minutes of last week’s contest before a late eruption. If those two minutes changed your opinion of Joe Flacco, there’s a mountain of evidence otherwise suggesting that he isn’t the quarterback at this stage to elevate the talent around him.

The Bengals just played a team with a backup quarterback and a shaky offensive line and held them to 20 points. I’m not so sure this New York unit is much better than Dallas’, at least on paper, and I don’t expect either of these teams to generate much of an offensive rhythm given their inconsistent play on offense to this point.