By Mark Curnutte
The Cincinnati Enquirer

Instability at quarterback is one of the reasons the Bengals had lost 48 of 64 games the previous four seasons.

But amid a revolving door behind center at Baltimore, the Ravens have managed to win consistently since Brian Billick took over in 1999.

The Bengals will get a look at Billick's latest quarterback reclamation project, Anthony Wright, in their first-place showdown Sunday at Baltimore.

After a rough first start against Miami, a Baltimore loss, Wright rebounded to throw six touchdowns and for 496 yards in consecutive victories against Seattle and San Francisco.

A record-setting offensive coordinator in Minnesota, Billick has been unable to find a quarterback in five seasons in Baltimore. Wright is the 10th quarterback to start for Billick, who has not started the same quarterback on five consecutive opening days. Five quarterbacks have started for the Bengals in the same span.

Billick finally did stick with rookie first-round draft choice Kyle Boller, who started the first nine games before injuring his leg at St. Louis.

"Anthony is playing because Kyle's hurt," Billick said Wednesday. "If Kyle had not gotten hurt, Kyle would still be our quarterback."

But Billick won't necessarily start Boller when he's healthy - - at the earliest the 15th game, at Cleveland - if Wright is playing well.

It's an example of Billick's pragmatic coaching style.

"You deal with the circumstances you have," Billick said. "Since I've been here, that's been the nature of it. And, yeah, I have gotten some criticism for the quarterbacks I've gone through."

Billick's Ravens are 44-32 in the regular season and went to the playoffs in 2001 and 2000, when they won Super Bowl XXXV. Before taking the Baltimore job, he was offensive coordinator in Minnesota when the Vikings set the NFL record for 556 points during the 1998 season.

"He doesn't get enough credit for what he does on offense," said Bengals tackle John Thornton, a former Tennessee Titan who has played against Billick's Ravens since his rookie year in 1999.

"Everybody expected him to have the Minnesota Vikings style of offense where they led the league in scoring. He's done a good job, even though he's really arrogant about his coaching. That's what people don't like; he's so arrogant."

Wright appears to be a good fit in Baltimore, which signed him off waivers Sept. 3, 2002, the day after Dallas released him.

He is 6 feet 1, 217 pounds and, at 27, in his fifth NFL season.

"He has brought an attitude of 'I should have been playing here a long time ago,' " Bengals coach Marvin Lewis said of Wright. "I think they have opened up a little more since the first time we played them."

Instead of seeing a two-wideout set roughly one in every four plays, Lewis said, the Ravens are going with two outside receivers - or splitting out tight end Todd Heap - half the time.

Wright has made the set work. He had two touchdown passes and 177 yards passing against the 49ers last week. The week before against the Seahawks, he led an improbable comeback with four TD passes and 319 yards.

But the pressure is not on Wright to carry the offense. The Ravens are second in the league in rushing offense at 158.2 yards a game, and Jamal Lewis leads the NFL with 1,442 yards.

"You're still going to ride your horse," Marvin Lewis said.

With 88 points in the past two games under Wright, the Ravens have jumped to seventh in scoring at 25 points a game.

"I had a rookie quarterback start 5-3 and I got a guy who basically was out of the league that now is sitting here at 2-1," Billick said. "So, evidently, we're doing something kind of right with the quarterbacks."

E-mail mcurnutte@enquirer.com

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