AFC North ranked toughest division in league by NFL.com

[Benton]

I dunno.

I'm a homer, so obviously I think the Bengals are stout. But the Ravens were just terrible last year and I didn't see any flashes of that changing. Both their lines are bad and that doesn't get fixed in a year. Flacco is serviceable and Smith was surprisingly good, but the ugly fact is significant injuries at his age for skills guys are usually the end.

The Steelers beat us, but they shouldn't have. They weren't a very good team either time. Their offense is strong, but not enough to put teams away. Their defense used to be their calling card, now it's just a bunch of average to bad players trying not to draw flags. If I remember right, they drew the most defensive penalty yards of anybody last season, which is just sloppy (to be fair, I think we were about five spots behind them, so we've got work to do there, too). Dupree might be big next season, but they're going to have to have some of that backfield step up. With the league moving more towards QB protection, you can't be the second worst pass defense team and scare anyone.