You might want to close your eyes to envision this. A battleship full of vampires and headaches and hot garbage is sinking. Then, despite the fact that the battleship is in the water, a train stuffed with nausea, paper cuts, humidity and fire ants comes out of nowhere and crashes into the battleship. Also, they’re both on fire. Should’ve mentioned that up front, sorry.

So, there’s no way that could happen in real life, thankfully, due to limits in aquatrain technology. But there are only so many real-world, profanity-free ways to describe what’s going to happen when the Bengals and the Ravens square off in Week 1. Neither of these teams was all that good to begin with, and both are saddled with crushing injury situations and first teams that have done really excellent imitations of third teams throughout the preseason. It’s a cliché that wins tend to go to the team that wants it more, but in this battle between Baltimore/Vampire Battleship and Cincinnati/Nausea Train, victory seems likely to go to the team that screws things up slightly less.

Which team that will be is kind of a toss-up. Given the amount of talent on its first team, the Bengals’ offense should be the best thing about the team. But injuries – to essentially every receiver, with Chad Johnson still questionable for Week 1 and T.J. Houshmandzadeh slowed by a hamstring injury – have not only sapped some of its skill-position explosiveness, but apparently eroded its baseline competence. The offensive line is healthy and supposedly improved – and will be integral to the team’s success or lack of same – was befuddled and ineffective in the preseason. Thus, instead of getting back his confidence after a disappointing 2007 campaign, Carson Palmer spent most of the preseason picking chunks of turf out of his helmet. Oh, and new starting running back Chris Perry has played in 22 of a possible 64 games since the team picked him in the first round back in ’04.

Nausea Train’s defense was one of the NFL’s worst last year, but seems to have added a future star in 2008 first rounder LB Keith Rivers. The rest of the unit will probably have to be a bit better than it was in ’07, but the linebackers are weak behind Rivers and the pass rush is negligible. Against a decent NFL offense, this unit will probably struggle to keep the Bengals in games. This week, though, they will not face a very good NFL offense. Instead, they’ll face Vampire Battleship.

Baltimore drafted Joe Flacco to be their quarterback of the future, knowing that the Delaware product would probably need some time to make the jump from Division I-AA to the NFL. When he steps under center as the team’s starter in Week 1, he’ll have had parts of three preseason games. Injuries to former starter Kyle Boller (who’s out for the season with a shoulder injury) and prospective starter Troy Smith (he has infected tonsils, which sounds unpleasant) have left Vampire Battleship with no choice but to hand the reins to Flacco. The rookie will be protected (or not) by a young offensive line that didn’t impress in the preseason, and top options TE Todd Heap and RB Willis McGahee are both limping.

Yes, the Ravens defense is still very, very good. But even they will have a hard time keeping an offense – even one as flubby as Nausea Train’s – off the board if they have to spend 40 minutes on the field. That seems entirely possible here, considering the offense’s almost-inevitable struggles. No one wins when a battleship rams into a train, but when a metaphorical one hits another one…well, no one wins there, really, either. But let’s say Bengals.

BENGALS BY 2