Trey Hendrickson will be back in the Jungle for a high-stakes New Year’s Eve showdown that could decide the AFC North.
Trey Hendrickson’s departure from the Cincinnati Bengals this past March ended a five-year run that produced four Pro Bowl selections, 61 sacks, and two of the most dominant individual pass-rush seasons this franchise has ever witnessed.
After a prolonged contract standoff that stretched across two offseasons, the Bengals declined to use the franchise tag and Hendrickson signed a four-year, $112 million deal with the Baltimore Ravens.
While Hendrickson will face his former team twice next year, his highly-anticipated return to Cincinnati now has a date.
Per NFL insider Jordan Schultz, the Bengals will host the Ravens on Thursday Night Football in Week 17, on New Year’s Eve, at 8:15 p.m. ET on Amazon Prime Video.
This is a shift from a league trend most Bengals fans have increasingly protested against these past few seasons. For four consecutive years, the NFL scheduled Cincinnati to play Baltimore on the road in primetime, including three straight Thursday night games in Baltimore.
Joe Burrow grew visibly frustrated with the pattern last May. “Playing in Baltimore for the fourth straight primetime year isn’t ideal,” Burrow said last year, with NFL scheduling VP Mike North also acknowledging Burrow’s criticism was “fair.”
Now, it appears the NFL scheduling office has now corrected course emphatically by flipping the venue and placing the game in Cincinnati on one of the most coveted calendar dates of the entire NFL season. The Ravens haven’t played a primetime game in Cincinnati since 2018, a 20-0 Baltimore victory on Thursday Night Football in Week 2.
Under Zac Taylor, the Bengals have played almost twice as many of their primetime games on the road as they have at home, and four times as many AFC North primetime games on the road as at home.
The date will also mark the ninth anniversary of the Andy Dalton to Tyler Boyd game-winning touchdown on New Year’s Eve 2016 that knocked the Ravens out of the playoffs and ended the Buffalo Bills’ 17-year postseason drought.
While the matchup will be headlined by the quarterback battle between Burrow and Ravens’ Lamar Jackson, both teams’ defensive units will also likely be a major talking point, depending on how the season unravels.
Baltimore arrives with Hendrickson leading a defensive line that also added interior pieces this offseason. It’s a unit that ranked tied for 28th in sacks last season and desperately needed the kind of edge presence Hendrickson now provides.
Cincinnati, meanwhile, brings blockbuster signing Dexter Lawrence, Boye Mafe, Cashius Howell, and Myles Murphy, a pass rush group assembled specifically to address a Bengals defense that ranked 30th in 2025.
The Bengals and Ravens are both projected as AFC North title contenders entering 2026 and a Week 17 matchup on New Year’s Eve could very reasonably serve as the division-deciding game. Hendrickson will walk back into the building where he became one of the best pass rushers in football, this time wearing purple.