Is Sunday night’s Bengals vs. Steelers game for first place in the AFC North, or for something closer to a two-game lead? That depends on who wins, because the two results don’t leave the division in mirror-image shape.

Start with where things stand. Cincinnati and Pittsburgh are both 6-2 and both on four-game winning streaks. The Bengals got there with a 34-17 win over Atlanta in Madrid. The Steelers got there by sitting still through their Week 9 bye. Behind them, the AFC North standings look like this:

The asymmetry comes from September. Pittsburgh won the first meeting 30-27 at Acrisure Stadium on Sept. 27, when Chris Boswell’s field goal with 2:15 left put the Steelers ahead and Derrick Harmon’s strip-sack of Joe Burrow ended Cincinnati’s last chance. Head-to-head is the first tiebreaker between two division teams. So a Pittsburgh win Sunday doesn’t just make it 7-2 against 6-3. It gives the Steelers the season sweep, which means the Bengals would have to finish ahead outright, gaining two games on Pittsburgh over the last eight weeks rather than one.

A Cincinnati win produces a 7-2 tie with the season series split. The next tiebreaker is division record, and the Bengals would lead that 2-1 to 2-2. That edge is softer than it looks, though. The Bengals still have three division games left (at Cleveland in Week 13, then Baltimore and Cleveland at home in Weeks 17 and 18), and the Steelers have two, both against the Ravens. Whatever the division-record column says on Monday morning could be rewritten before New Year’s.

The market leans Cincinnati. The game opened at Bengals -3.5 at both DraftKings and FanDuel, with totals of 48.5 and 47.5 respectively, and FanDuel had the moneyline at Bengals -200, Steelers +168. Before the bookmaker’s margin comes out, -200 works out to about a two-in-three chance. That’s a lean, not a lock.

There’s a fair argument for the lean. The Bengals have scored more than 30 points in four straight games (31, 35, 43, 34), matching a franchise record last set in 1997. Burrow went 24-of-29 for 271 yards and three touchdowns in Madrid, plus a sneak, with no turnovers.

The concession is on the other side of the ball. Cincinnati needed overtime to beat Tennessee 43-36 in Week 8, and Pittsburgh scored 30 on this defense in September. A team that wins shootouts can also lose one. The case for the Bengals still holds up, mainly because the offense has kept the defense from having to win games on its own. Sunday brings back the offense that put 30 on them in September, which is a fair test of whether that arrangement holds for four quarters.

Pittsburgh’s side of it is steadier, if less flashy. Aaron Rodgers called the Week 8 win over Cleveland (27-6) “Not very complete” and added, “We’re right where we want to be.” Both lines are accurate. The Steelers settled for two red-zone field goals that day and still won by 21. They also get the rest edge, coming off a bye while Cincinnati comes home from Spain. How much that matters on a Sunday night in mid-November is anyone’s guess, but it’s a real difference between the two teams’ weeks.

Then there’s the rest of the division, and the third team may not be the one most people expect. Cleveland, at 5-4, sits a game and a half back and has already beaten both Pittsburgh (27-24) and Baltimore (13-10). The Browns’ overtime loss in New Orleans hurt. It didn’t remove them, and they still play the Bengals twice.

The Ravens are 4-5. They started 4-1 and have lost four straight, the last a 33-10 home loss to Jacksonville, and they’ve been held under 14 points in four consecutive games for the first time in franchise history. Lamar Jackson is on injured reserve after surgery on the right thumb he hurt on his first dropback against Buffalo in Week 8. Jesse Minter said it was “potentially” season-ending. Since then, Ian Rapoport has reported that Jackson told teammates he plans to return this season. The team hasn’t announced a timeline.

Jacoby Brissett is the bridge. Baltimore sent a 2027 fourth-round pick and a 2028 seventh to Arizona for Brissett and a 2027 fifth. He started the Cardinals’ first eight games before being dropped to third string, and he’s slated to start Monday night against the Chargers, a game the Ravens opened as 3.5-point favorites.

The Ravens’ case rests almost entirely on the calendar. IR keeps Jackson out at least four games, and with a Week 13 bye that makes the Week 14 home game against Tampa Bay the earliest he could play. After that, all four of Baltimore’s remaining division games come in a row: at Pittsburgh, Cleveland, at Cincinnati, and Pittsburgh again in Week 18. A team that’s 0-2 in the division and two and a half games back still controls a lot of its own outcome, but only if it reaches December close enough for those games to matter. That depends on how Brissett handles the Chargers, Panthers and Texans first.

That’s also why Sunday night matters to Baltimore. A Steelers win would put Pittsburgh at 7-2 with a sweep of Cincinnati, and the Ravens’ two late games against Pittsburgh would be games against a clear leader. A Bengals win would leave a two-team tie at the top. Baltimore would still get three games against the co-leaders, but it would need both of them to slip, not just one.

What Sunday can’t settle is the rest of it. Can Brissett keep Baltimore within a game or two? Does Jackson’s reported plan turn into an actual activation, and does it come before the Week 15 trip to Pittsburgh? Do the Browns’ two games against Cincinnati turn out to decide the Bengals’ season? A Bengals vs. Steelers result will say who leads the AFC North, and possibly by how much. It won’t say who gets to play spoiler in December.