Expecting Joe Burrow to play perfect football for six weeks after returning from a turf toe injury and lead the Bengals to the playoffs was always a tall order, even though they nearly managed it last year by winning their last five games.
The harsh reality is that unless Burrow plays error-free football, Cincinnati’s chances of winning are slim given its porous defense.
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Cincinnati Bengals head coach Zac Taylor speaks during a news conference after an NFL football game against the Buffalo Bills, Sunday, Dec. 7, 2025, in Orchard Park, N.Y. (AP Photo/Jeffrey T. Barnes)
Cincinnati Bengals wide receiver Tee Higgins (5) comes down with a touchdown catch as Buffalo Bills cornerback Tre'Davious White (27) defends during the second half of an NFL football game, Sunday, Dec. 7, 2025, in Orchard Park, N.Y. (AP Photo/Jeffrey T. Barnes)
Cincinnati Bengals head coach Zac Taylor looks out from the sideline during the first half of an NFL football game against the Buffalo Bills, Sunday, Dec. 7, 2025, in Orchard Park, N.Y. (AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar)
Cincinnati Bengals quarterback Joe Burrow speaks during a news conference after an NFL football game against the Buffalo Bills, Sunday, Dec. 7, 2025, in Orchard Park, N.Y. (AP Photo/Jeffrey T. Barnes)
Cincinnati Bengals quarterback Joe Burrow (9) shovels the ball during the first half of an NFL football game against the Buffalo Bills, Sunday, Dec. 7, 2025, in Orchard Park, N.Y. (AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar)
Cincinnati (4-9) has just a 1% playoff chance after Sunday’s 39-34 loss at Buffalo. The Bengals need both Pittsburgh (7-6) and Baltimore (6-7) to falter, and must win out themselves, to claim the AFC North via a three-way head-to-head tiebreaker.
“I know we’re up against the wall here with whatever our opportunities are, but we got a big home game this week in the division, so we’ve got to be able to pick ourselves up and find a way to respond,” coach Zac Taylor said.
The defeat to the Bills marked the seventh time in two seasons — and the third game this year — where Cincinnati has scored at least 30 points and lost.
The Bengals also became the first team to lose at least three games in consecutive seasons in which they scored at least 34 points. The only other squads to do that in a season are the 2002 Kansas City Chiefs and 1985 San Diego Chargers.
After two weeks of improvement in run defense and tackling, Cincinnati’s earlier problems resurfaced. Poor tackling and lapses in run defense again hampered the team.
Buffalo had 183 rushing yards as James Cook and Josh Allen both had at least 78 yards. Allen’s 17-yard scramble up the middle on third-and-15 with 1:54 remaining allowed the Bills to run out the clock.
According to Pro Football Focus, the Bengals had 13 missed tackles on Sunday after having 12 combined the past two weeks.
The sixth pick-6 of Burrow’s career couldn’t have come at a worse time. The 63-yard interception return came when Buffalo ran a corner blitz, and Bills cornerback Christian Benford jumped the route on a hot read. The second pick came on a tipped pass.
Given the wintery conditions, Burrow’s 264 passing yards and three touchdowns were solid. However, earlier missed opportunities — such as failing to hold a 15-point, fourth-quarter lead against the Jets on Oct. 26, or missing a key tackle in the final minutes against Chicago a week later — have left the Bengals with little room for error.
As a result, the Bengals are assured their first losing record since 2020 and are likely to miss the postseason for the third straight year, despite boasting one of the league’s best quarterback and receiving units.
“Obviously, we’re not where we want to be, as a team or an organization, 4-9 is not good. But we got four games to go and show high-level execution, high-level playmaking,” Burrow said. “I’m going to relish the opportunity to go out and play with these guys, and continue to try to put on a show for everybody watching. I hope that comes across, and I hope that I know I’m going to continue to work hard to put myself in a good position to make plays.”
The Bengals were 10 of 12 on third down, with an 83.3% success rate, their best since 1991. The previous high was 77.8% (14 of 18) in a 2007 win over Tennessee.
Covering tight ends remains a major weakness for Cincinnati’s defense. Buffalo’s tight ends had 11 catches for 137 yards and two touchdowns, exposing this ongoing problem.
TE Mike Gesicki had a season-high six receptions for 86 yards and his first touchdown.
S Geno Stone, who came into the game tied for the league lead with 18 missed tackles, had three more, including one on Allen’s key third-and-15 run.
DE Trey Hendrickson (hip/pelvis) missed five straight games. CB PJ Jules left Sunday’s game with an ankle injury. Higgins returned after two concussion evaluations.
Wide receiver Jermaine Burton was waived on Monday. The second-year player was suspended for Sunday's game. He did not appear in a game this season after having four catches for 107 yards in 14 games last year.
1-8: Cincinnati’s record in out-of-division games.
60.8%: Decrease in Cincinnati’s win probability percentage after Burrow’s pick-6 (from 77% to 16.2%). That is the single biggest win probability swing on a play outside of the final 2 minutes since 2016.
Next up, the Bengals host AFC North rival Baltimore, currently 6-7 and one game out of the division lead after losing 27-22 to Pittsburgh. Cincinnati will try to sweep the season series for the first time since 2021 following its 32-14 win at Baltimore on Thanksgiving night.
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Cincinnati Bengals head coach Zac Taylor speaks during a news conference after an NFL football game against the Buffalo Bills, Sunday, Dec. 7, 2025, in Orchard Park, N.Y. (AP Photo/Jeffrey T. Barnes)
Cincinnati Bengals wide receiver Tee Higgins (5) comes down with a touchdown catch as Buffalo Bills cornerback Tre'Davious White (27) defends during the second half of an NFL football game, Sunday, Dec. 7, 2025, in Orchard Park, N.Y. (AP Photo/Jeffrey T. Barnes)
Cincinnati Bengals head coach Zac Taylor looks out from the sideline during the first half of an NFL football game against the Buffalo Bills, Sunday, Dec. 7, 2025, in Orchard Park, N.Y. (AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar)
Cincinnati Bengals quarterback Joe Burrow speaks during a news conference after an NFL football game against the Buffalo Bills, Sunday, Dec. 7, 2025, in Orchard Park, N.Y. (AP Photo/Jeffrey T. Barnes)
Cincinnati Bengals quarterback Joe Burrow (9) shovels the ball during the first half of an NFL football game against the Buffalo Bills, Sunday, Dec. 7, 2025, in Orchard Park, N.Y. (AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar)
NEW YORK (AP) — No quick dispatching of disease investigators. No televised news conference to inform the public. No timely health alerts to doctors.
In the midst of a hantavirus outbreak that involves Americans and is making headlines around the world, the U.S. government's top public health agency, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, has been uncharacteristically missing in action, according to a number of experts.
To President Donald Trump, "We seem to have things under very good control," as he told reporters Friday evening.
To experts, the situation aboard a cruise ship has not spiraled because, unlike COVID-19 or measles or the flu, hantavirus does not spread easily. It has been health experts in other countries, not the United States, who have been dealing primarily with the outbreak in the past week.
“The CDC is not even a player," said Lawrence Gostin, an international public health expert at Georgetown University. “I've never seen that before.”
Not until late Friday did CDC actions accelerate.
Health officials confirmed the deployment of a team to Spain's Canary Islands, where the ship was expected to arrive early Sunday local time, to meet the Americans onboard. They said a second team will go to Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska as part of a plan to evacuate American passengers from the ship to a quarantine center. Also, the CDC issued its first health alert to U.S. doctors, advising them of the possibility of imported cases.
The CDC's diminished role in this outbreak is an indicator the agency is no longer the force in international health or the protector of domestic health that it once was, some experts said.
The hantavirus outbreak is “a sentinel event” that speaks to “how well the country is prepared for a disease threat. And right now, I’m very sorry to say that we are not prepared,” said Dr. Jeanne Marrazzo, chief executive officer of the Infectious Diseases Society of America.
Early last month, a 70-year-old Dutch man developed a feverish illness on a cruise ship traveling from Argentina to Antarctica and some islands in the South Atlantic. He died less than a week later. More people became sick, including the man's wife and a German woman, who both died.
Hantavirus was first identified as a cause of sickness of one of the cases on May 2. The World Health Organization swung into action and by Monday was calling it an outbreak. About two dozen Americans were on the ship, including about seven who disembarked last month and 17 who remained on board.
For decades, the CDC partnered with the WHO in such situations. The CDC acted as a mainstay of any international investigation, providing staff and expertise to help unravel any outbreak mystery, develop ways to control it and communicate to the public what they should know and how they should worry.
Such actions were a large reason why the CDC developed a reputation as the world's premier public health agency.
But this time, the WHO has been center stage. It made the risk assessment that has told people the outbreak is not a pandemic threat.
“I don’t think this is a giant threat to the United States,” said Jennifer Nuzzo, director of Brown University’s Pandemic Center. But how this situation has played out “just shows how empty and vapid the CDC is right now,” she said.
The current situation comes after 16 tumultuous months during which the Trump administration withdrew from the WHO, has restricted CDC scientists from talking to international counterparts at times and embarked on a plan to build its own international public health network through one-on-one agreements with individual countries.
The administration has laid off thousands of CDC scientists and public health professionals, including members of the agency's ship sanitation program.
As this was playing out, Trump's health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., said he was working to “restore the CDC’s focus on infectious disease, invest in innovation, and rebuild trust through integrity and transparency.”
The CDC has not been completely silent on hantavirus.
The agency on Wednesday issued a short statement that said the risk to the American public is “extremely low,” and described the U.S. government as “the world’s leader in global health security.”
Said Nuzzo: “Not only was that not helpful, it actually does damage because a core principle of public health communications is humility.”
The CDC's acting director, Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, posted a message on social media that the agency was lending its expertise in coordinating with other federal agencies and international authorities. Arizona officials this week said they learned from the CDC that one of the Americans who left the ship — a person with no symptoms and not considered contagious — had already returned to the state. WHO officials said the CDC has been sharing technical information.
The CDC also is “monitoring the health status and preparing medical support for all of the American passengers on the cruise,” Bhattacharya wrote.
But federal health officials have mostly been tight-lipped, declining interview requests.
In interviews this week, some experts made a comparison with a 2020 incident involving the Diamond Princess, a cruise ship docked in Japan that became the setting of one of the first large COVID-19 outbreaks outside of China.
The CDC sent personnel to the port, helped evacuate American passengers, ran quarantines, shared genetic data on the virus, coordinated with the WHO and Japan, held public briefings and rapidly published reports “that became the world’s reference data on cruise ship COVID transmission,” said Dr. Tom Frieden, a former CDC director.
Some aspects of the international response to the Diamond Princess were criticized, and it did not halt the outbreak or stop COVID-19’s spread across the world. But some experts say it was not for the CDC's lack of trying.
“The CDC was right on top of it, very visible, very active in trying to manage and contain it,” Gostin said, while the agency's work now is delayed and subdued.
Instead of working with nearly all of the world's nations through the WHO, the Trump administration has pursued bilateral health agreements with individual nations for information sharing, public health support, and what it describes as “the introduction of innovative American technologies.” Roughly 30 agreements are currently in place.
That's not sufficient, Gostin said. “You can't possibly cover a global health crisis by doing one-on-one deals with countries here and there,” he said.
Associated Press writers Ali Swenson in New York, Darlene Superville in Washington and Susan Montoya Bryan in Albuquerque, New Mexico, contributed to this report.
The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
Passengers on the the hantavirus-stricken cruise ship, MV Hondius, watch epidemiologists board the boat in Praia, during their voyage to Spain's port of Tenerife, May 6, 2026. (AP Photo)
Workers set up temporary shelters in the area where passengers from the MV Hondius cruise ship are expected to arrive at the port of Granadilla in Tenerife, Canary Islands, Spain, Saturday, May 9, 2026. (AP Photo/Manu Fernandez)
Crew members of the hantavirus-stricken cruise ship, MV Hondius, wait their turns for a first interview with epidemiologists, during the voyage to Spain's port of Tenerife, May 6, 2026. (AP Photo)
Health workers in protective gear evacuate patients from the MV Hondius cruise ship into an ambulance at a port in Praia, Cape Verde, Wednesday, May 6, 2026. (AP Photo/Misper Apawu)
A Spanish Civil Guard officer inspects the area where passengers from the MV Hondius cruise ship are expected to arrive at the port of Granadilla in Tenerife, Canary Islands, Spain, Saturday, May 9, 2026. (AP Photo/Manu Fernandez)
