Updated standings for top-5 draft order: Bengals remain favorite for No. 1

The Cincinnati Bengals were absolutely slaughtered by the Baltimore Ravens. But, at least one silver lining from the divisional embarrassment is that they’ll continue as the strong favorites to secure the top-overall spot in the 2020 NFL Draft.

The Bengals have a few teams they’ll be competing with to be the league’s worst team, a title teams completely out of the playoff race may not mind having, or at least the fanbases don’t mind that much.

As for the most recent standings, the Bengals are No. 1, followed by Washington, the league’s only one-win team. The Giants, Dolphins, Jets and Falcons all come in with two victories.

What’s even more surprising than the Bengals losing to Baltimore, which wasn’t surprising at all, was the fact that three of the five then one-win teams won on Sunday, all of them were in action besides the Redskins. One win teams were 3-1 Sunday.

That said, the Bengals will now need two wins to even compete for a spot lower than two. At this point, the team will continue to fight, but isn’t it in some regards just better to win one and stay the league’s worst teams, securing the top pick?

There’s no desire to purposely tank, but I won’t be upset if the Bengals only beat one of the Browns, Jets and Dolphins. Their schedule does lighten up the rest of the way, but the Bengals need to keep the dream of snagging Chase Young or Joe Burrow alive.

For now, the Bengals will seemingly be rocking with Ryan Finley. Finley wasn’t great, but he was commendable in his first start. He had 167 yards, one touchdown and one costly mid-game pick six.

Overall, the running game was solid, and Finley looked competent. However, the defense gave up a lofty 49 points. It doesn’t matter what’s going in the right direction offensively if that happens.

They should be better next week against the Raiders.