NFL's Vice President of Broadcast Planning Mike North Weighs in on Cincinnati Bengals Schedule

The Bengals 2025 regular season schedule was released earlier this month.

Cincinnati has to play in Baltimore on Thursday night for the third straight year.

NFL Vice President of Broadcast Planning Mike North made it clear that the league deserves criticism for putting the Bengals in that position.

"It's fair. It's not a one-or-two years sort of a league where you fix every problem every other year or every two years," North told Geoff Hobson of Bengals.com. "Once you start getting to the same thing three years in a row, four, or five years in a row, whether it's a short week Thursday on the road or opening on the road.

"When trends like that emerge, we probably have to adjust at some point."

The Bengals have a primetime game in Baltimore for a fourth-straight year.

"Playing in Baltimore for the fourth straight primetime year isn't ideal. Maybe we could get one of those in Cincinnati next year, please," Joe Burrow said on May 20.

Even North expressed some regret according to Hobson.

"If North could have one game back to re-schedule, he would 'wave a magic wand," over that third straight short week Thursday night game in Baltimore on Nov. 27," Hobson wrote.

The Bengals are hoping to get back to the playoffs for the first time since 2022. They finished 9-8 the past two seasons. Meanwhile, the Ravens are hoping to become the first team to win the AFC North in three-straight seasons.

"It just ended up as we got down the stretch here, that this was our best schedule, and fully acknowledging that, I'm sure the Bengals fans are a little surprised and probably a little disappointed," North says. "Which puts them in the same category as all 31 other teams. Everybody is just a little disappointed in the schedule makers."

Check out Hobson's entire article here.