Getty Baltimore Ravens quarterback Lamar Jackson runs with the ball against the Cincinnati Bengals.
The Baltimore Ravens played their worst game of the season in Week 7, surrendering over 500 total yards of offense to the Cincinnati Bengals in the 41-17 blowout.
Bengals cornerback Eli Apple was sure to rub salt in the wound after his team upset the 6.5-point favorite Ravens, throwing the Ravens’ catchphrase back in their face as he entered the locker room.
“Big truss. Huge truss,” said Apple, referencing the phrase first popularized by Lamar Jackson and Mark Ingram during Jackson’s MVP season in 2019.
Bengals CB Eli Apple with a “Big Truss,” a Baltimore catchphrase, and then some in the postgame aftermath.
Apple paused for a moment, then added, “Not big, but astronomical truss,” to put a postgame exclamation mark on the Bengals’ emphatic victory over the Ravens.
After a week of back-and-forth between Baltimore and Cincinnati leading up to Sunday’s game, it’s not surprising that the victors of the matchup would have something to say after the game.
What was surprising was not only that the Bengals beat the Ravens, but that they did so in Baltimore by 24 points, the Ravens’ largest defeat with Jackson under center. Before Sunday, the Bengals had lost their last five matchups with the Ravens by a combined scoreline of 161-57.
But the Bengals came into Baltimore confident they could walk out with a victory.
“If you ain’t believe it yet, you better start,” said Bengals All-Pro safety Jessie Bates to USA Today’s Tyler Dragon.
Bengals head coach Zac Taylor added his thoughts as well, via NFL.com’s Judy Battista:
Baltimore has really taken it to us the last several times we have played them, and we don’t run from that. So, I won’t say we needed to prove it to ourselves, because we had a lot of people in that locker room who were confident going into that game today. But this was a box we needed to check.”
Ravens Mocked for Slogan a Second Time
This isn’t the first time a victorious opponent has thrown the Ravens’ ‘Big Truss’ slogan back in their face.
Tennessee Titans wide receiver Tajae Sharpe used the phrase to introduce running back Derrick Henry after the Titans upset the Ravens in the AFC Divisional Round in January 2020.
.@Show19ine opens up for @KingHenry_2 with a little BIG TRUSS #Titans
The Ravens got their revenge during Wild Card Weekend the following season, celebrating on the Titans’ logo after now-injured cornerback Marcus Peters intercepted Ryan Tannehill to seal the playoff win.
AFC up for Grabs Through Week 7
Not only did the Bengals’ victory propel them into first place in the AFC North, it also has them sitting atop the entire AFC due to a 3-0 conference record.
The Ravens, who entered the week in first place of both their division and their conference, now sit at second in the division and fifth in the conference, with losses to the Bengals and the Las Vegas Raiders hurting their tiebreaker status.
With four teams at 5-2, plus the Buffalo Bills and Los Angeles Chargers sitting at 4-2 after their Week 7 byes, there’s no clear frontrunner in the AFC. Even the Kansas City Chiefs, who represented the conference at the last two Super Bowls, are a 3-4 after an embarrassing 27-3 loss to the Titans.
So while the Bengals have every right to be confident after their statement win on Sunday, there’s still plenty of football left to play and absolutely no telling how playoff seeding in the AFC will shake out at the end of the regular season.