CINCINNATI (AP) — Regardless of if it’s Lamar Jackson or Tyler Huntley starting at quarterback for the Baltimore Ravens against Cincinnati on Sunday, the Bengals secondary recognizes that it has a tough challenge as it prepares for running back Derrick Henry and wide receiver Zay Flowers.
Fortunately for the Bengals, safeties Jordan Battle (hamstring) and Bryan Cook (ankle) were able to get healthier at the bye week entering a key game.
While Jackson was listed as limited with an ankle injury on Wednesday, the Bengals are preparing to face the two-time MVP.
“You have to try to contain Lamar,” Cook said. “He’s a force to be reckoned with. He’s one of the best dual-threats if not the best dual threat of this generation. He’s very explosive. He has a tank in the backfield with 22 (Henry). You try to contain those two. They have a high-powered offense. We have to slow them down, capitalize on missed opportunities, get a turnover and be physical. It’s the AFC North.”
Cook missed nearly two full games because of an ankle injury that he suffered in Week 3. The Bengals are 3-0 in full games that Cook has played. Without him, the defense really struggled on perimeter runs.
Cook, who has had success playing against the Ravens during his tenure with the Kansas City Chiefs, expects to be a difference-maker against those runs that test defensive backs.
The bye week came at a great time for Cook. Bengals coach Zac Taylor said that he sees Cook moving more confidently than he was a couple of weeks ago, and defensive coordinator Al Golden said that he views Cook as “back to being healthy.”
“I’m excited to really go,” Cook said. “You don’t know how well you feel until you really push yourself. It’s like life. When you hit those extremes, you’re alive.”
Bengals cornerback DJ Turner is expected to match up against Flowers, who ranks sixth in the NFL in receiving yards per game.
“(Flowers) is dynamic,” Golden said. “They’re getting him the ball in space. They’re very creative with how they’re doing it. His run after catch is excellent. His ability to stop and start is among the elite. We really have to do a great job of tackling him in space. Obviously, he’s a threat to go deep at any moment in the game. He’s a really good football player.”
All season, Turner has followed the opposing team’s No. 1 receiver. He has done a great job of limiting the production of those players, ranging from DK Metcalf of the Pittsburgh Steelers to Parker Washington of the Jacksonville Jaguars.
It’s a role that Turner embraces.
“It’s what I’ve always wanted to do,” Turner said. “It’s what I’ve dreamed of. Just being a starting corner wasn’t OK for me. This is what I wanted to do, so I kept on at it. Now that I’ve got that role, I’ve got to do it.”
There’s one big question mark in the secondary. Three weeks ago, the Bengals moved Dax Hill from outside cornerback to the nickel cornerback position. Filling in the spot that Hill had taken, rookie Tacario Davis has been splitting time with veteran DJ Ivey.
What’s next at this outside corner spot?
“We’ll see how it progresses, if one starts to move ahead of the other,” Golden said. “We’ll see what transpires here.”
See AP’s full NFL coverage here
Cincinnati Bengals safety Jordan Battle (27) intercepts a pass during the first half of an NFL football game against the Miami Dolphins in Miami Gardens, Fla., Sunday, Oct. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell)
Cincinnati Bengals safety Jordan Battle, left, celebrates with safety Bryan Cook (6) after intercepting a pass during the first half of an NFL football game against the Miami Dolphins in Miami Gardens, Fla., Sunday, Oct. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell)
WARSAW, Poland (AP) — Women plan street demonstrations in more than 20 Polish cities and towns Thursday to protest the lack of access to free and legal abortion.
They're accusing Prime Minister Donald Tusk's liberal government of failing to fulfill its promise to relax Poland's strict abortion laws, and protesting even though the parliament passed two bills on Tuesday aimed at easing abortion rules. The measures are likely to be vetoed by the conservative president, Karol Nawrocki.
Passing the draft laws now, a year before the next parliamentary election, is a case of “token gestures” rather than a genuine effort to reform abortion law, said Zofia Marcinek of the Abortion Dream Team, a reproductive rights activist group in Warsaw.
She said the liberal government knew the draft laws stand no chance of withstanding Nawrocki's veto, and has merely tried to create the impression of taking action because it needs women's support to win elections next year.
Since 1993, legal abortions have been allowed in Catholic Poland only in cases of severe fetal abnormality, risk to the mother’s life and health, or the pregnancy being a result of rape or incest.
Polish women have been pushing for the legalization of abortion ever since, including in a nationwide wave of demonstrations of women wearing black called “Black Protest,” which began in 2016.
Rather than being liberalized, Poland’s abortion laws were tightened further, banning abortions of fetuses with congenital defects in 2020 under the national-conservative Law and Justice (PiS) government.
Despite the laws, abortions remain common in Poland, an overwhelming majority of which are carried out by women at home using pills obtained from outside the country. Women who undergo abortions, including by taking pills, do not face criminal responsibility under Polish law. But people helping them, including doctors and family, can potentially be prosecuted.
And abortion remains a taboo subject in Poland, which now has one of Europe’s most restrictive abortion laws, with only Malta imposing stricter limits.
Tusk’s pro-European coalition won the 2023 election in part on a promise to liberalize Poland’s abortion laws. But in 2024, Tusk said his government wouldn't be able to overcome the likely veto of a conservative president. Instead, measures were introduced to prevent hospitals from refusing to perform legal abortions on religious grounds.
"The state will increasingly effectively stand on the side of the woman when she is making dramatic decisions in her life,” Tusk said in 2024 when he announced the measures.
Polish hospitals performed 573 abortions in the first half of 2026, compared to 452 in the whole of 2022 before Tusk came to power, according to data from the national health fund. But activists say tens of thousands of abortions happen yearly outside of hospitals.
Activists organizing Thursday’s protests are claiming the Tusk government has betrayed Polish women — and that Tusk's claims that women's access to abortion has improved during his administration have actually complicated getting care for some women.
“The government's promises act as a type of disinformation,” Marcinek told the AP. “Women getting pregnant hear the prime minister say that everything is ok, that there is access to abortion, and then they end up in the hospital and see that is not the case. So they come to us when it's very late and very complicated and expensive to help them.”
Meanwhile, international donors are less interested in supporting Polish women's rights because they mistakenly believe things have improved, Marcinek said.
In 2025, the Abortion Dream Team opened an “ abortion clinic ” across from the parliament building in Warsaw where women can get information about their options, or even take their abortion pills in the company of supporting activists.
This September, the activists also launched a parcel locker dispensing abortion pills at the same location, nicknamed “Abortomat."
The dispenser is operated by the international feminist non-profit Women Help Women. It enables women needing abortions to get the pills the next day, rather than wait for up to two weeks for home delivery, Marcinek said.
“There are also people who cannot safely order such pills at their own address, for example because of an unsupportive family or abusive partner," she said. “These women can get a pin number and pick up the pills in the machine the next day.”
“In Poland, assisting with an abortion is a criminal offence. Even passing the pills from hand to hand can be considered a crime,” the Abortion Dream Team wrote in a statement. "That’s why we’re hacking the Criminal Code and bringing abortion into the 21st century.”
FILE - Polish abortion rights activists open a center where women can have abortions with pills, either alone or with other women, in Warsaw, Poland on Saturday, March 8, 2025. (AP Photo/Czarek Sokolowski, File)
FILE - A woman with the sign of a women's rights organization and with a pro-LGBT+ rights flag take part in a protest in Warsaw, Poland, Tuesday, July 23, 2024. (AP Photo/Czarek Sokolowski, File)
