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Tennessee Titans vs Cincinnati Bengals recap: final score and what we learned (2026 Week 8)

NFL Audit · 2026 Week 8 · Game recap

The Cincinnati Bengals beat the Tennessee Titans 43-36, and it was a lot more of a fight than the scoring numbers in our preview suggested. A team we flagged as unable to score put up 36. The Bengals still got the win by 7, and they did it while giving the ball away four times. That says plenty about how good the offense can be when it's humming.

The result

This was a pass-heavy night for Cincinnati. The Bengals piled up 510 yards at 7.3 per play, with 435 of them through the air at 8.5 per pass. They collected 29 first downs, 22 of them by passing. Whatever Tennessee tried to do, it never really solved the Bengals' passing attack.

The Titans were far from a pushover, though. They finished with 440 yards at 6.3 per play and 23 first downs. Their ground game did exactly what a team in their spot needs it to do: 158 rushing yards on 28 carries, a healthy 5.6 per rush. Cincinnati managed 75 rushing yards on 19 attempts at 3.9 per carry. Both teams ran 70 plays and finished with 14 drives, so this was a close contest in terms of opportunities. The difference was how efficiently the Bengals turned theirs into yards through the air.

The turnover column is the strange part. Cincinnati gave it away four times: three interceptions and a lost fumble. Tennessee turned it over twice, both lost fumbles, and threw no interceptions. Normally that column decides the game. Here the Bengals' offense was good enough to survive it.

How our preview held up

The preview made no pick, so there's nothing to grade on that front. The read itself was mostly right, with one big miss on the Titans' offense.

We called Cincinnati the steadier team, pointing to its 27.2 points per game and the passing game as the biggest difference. The Bengals' output through the air backed that up. We also said Tennessee's best path was to run the ball and shorten the game, and the rushing numbers show the Titans tried exactly that and found success.

Where we undersold them was scoring. We leaned hard on Tennessee's 15.4 points per game and called the gap between the teams a canyon. A team averaging 15.4 scored 36 and made the Bengals work to the end. Our worry that the Titans couldn't finish drives didn't hold up here. The preview also treated the Bengals' ball security as a non-issue, and four giveaways say otherwise.

What it means

For Cincinnati, this is a win worth taking and a game worth studying. The offense looks capable of winning shootouts, which is a real asset. But four turnovers is the kind of habit that can turn a comfortable win into a loss against a team that holds on to the ball better. The defense, which had allowed 20.3 per game, gave up 36 here. That's the number to watch going forward.

For Tennessee, the loss stings, but the performance gives them something to build on. The running game was efficient and the offense moved the ball all night. They lost the yardage battle through the air and never got the turnover edge they needed. If this version of the offense is the real one, the 15.4 average in our preview may turn out to understate them. One game doesn't settle that, but it's a real data point.

Read our pre-game preview: Tennessee Titans vs Cincinnati Bengals preview: team news, form and key matchups (2026 Week 8)

Final score

Team stats

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Data attribution: Stats for informational analysis only. Verify figures against official league sources.