FLOWERY BRANCH, Ga. — On Sunday morning, the Atlanta Falcons will play the Cincinnati Bengals inside the famed Bernabéu Stadium in Madrid, Spain.
The Falcons traveled to Madrid earlier this week to prepare for their first and only international game this season. After playing three straight prime-time games in a row and winning two of them, Atlanta has shown the ability to adapt its schedule successfully.
Cincinnati is coming off three straight victories and has scored at least 30 points in all of them. The Bengals boast one of the league’s top offensive trios with quarterback Joe Burrow and wide receivers Ja’Marr Chase and Tee Higgins. In the Bengals’ Week 8 win against Tennessee, Burrow threw for 462 yards with five touchdowns, two to Higgins and one to Ja’Marr Chase.
“They present so many challenges,” Falcons defensive coordinator Jeff Ulbrich said of the Bengals’ offense. “For me to say we can take away everything, that’s impossible. We’ve really got to hyper-focus on when they feature these certain players, or where they feature the run game and try to do that as best we can as the course of the game goes along. But at the end of the day, there’s no way you can take away all their threats, especially off one particular play. So, guys are going to have to stand up on hard downs, and our guys are ready for that challenge.”
