Feb 1
This Bengals Team Changed Cincinnati
When Joe Burrow tore his ACL and MCL last season, it felt like just another disappointing chapter in Cincinnati Bengals history.
Here we go again.
Cincinnatians had seen this before. We remembered watching Heisman Trophy winner and number one draft pick, Ki-Jana Carter, tear up his knee in his final preseason game in 1995. He was never the same.
We remembered celebrating in the 2006 Wild Card game when Carson Palmer threw a perfect pass to Chris Henry down the sideline for a big gain, only to have the camera pan to Palmer writhing on the ground, his knee torn to shreds after a Steelers player rolled into him. He was never the same.
Here we go again.
It became a refrain of Bengals fans — and really of Cincinnati sports fans in general — for over thirty years.
My family moved to New Jersey from Cincinnati in 1992, so I wasn’t living here when the Bengals became the “Bungles” and had some comically bad teams, but…well, I’ll just say it was hard being a Bengals fan in New Jersey in the 1990s.
Friends who lived in Cincinnati told me of an entire generation of kids growing up in the 1990s who lost interest in the Bengals. Can’t blame them. It’s hard to get excited about a team that doesn’t win.
Even when we started to win under Marvin Lewis, it didn’t feel like we were winning. Losing seven Wild Card playoff games will do that to you.
Don’t get your hopes up.
The worst playoff loss of all, of course, was the “meltdown game” in 2016 against the Steelers. It wasn’t so much that they lost, it was the way they lost. The city was embarrassed.
I still can’t bring myself to watch the highlights of that game. Once was enough.
It’s strange to say that a city can be scarred by the losing of a professional sports team. It’s just a game, right? But it was true in Cincinnati.
My wife isn’t from Cincinnati and couldn’t understand why we were all so cynical about the Bengals.
I tried to explain, but failed to produce a rational argument.
Here we go again.
This team was supposed to be terrible, too. Pre-season odds had the Bengals with the third-lowest chance of winning the Super Bowl of any team in the league.
This was Sports Illustrated’s forecast for the AFC North.
Even after Joe Burrow’s remarkable off-season rehabilitation, big regular season wins against the Ravens, Chiefs, and Steelers, and winning the AFC North, that sense of dread lingered. What’s going to happen this time?
You could feel it in the fourth quarter of this year’s Wild Card game against the Raiders. With the Raiders marching down the field trying to tie the game, the referees made a terrible roughing the passer call, giving the Raiders another 15 yards.
Here we go again.
And then something remarkable happened. The defense held. Germaine Pratt intercepts the ball on 4th down.
Bengals win! Curse broken. I had to scan the TV for penalty flags before accepting it happened.
And then…they won again, beating the number one seed Titans in Nashville on a game-winning field goal from Evan McPherson.
And then again, coming from behind to beat the heavily favored Chiefs in Kansas City to win the AFC Championship.
The Bengals are going to the Super Bowl. It’s a great feeling to write that. 31 years of disappointment and pessimism in Cincinnati sports have been washed away.
We have confidence again.
What Cincinnati loves about this team is the quiet confidence of its leaders, too many to name here. No excuses, just win. Perfectly aligned with the city’s values.
These Bengals had faith before we did and thank goodness for that. As Burrow put it after the Wild Card win, “It’s a great win for us, for the city and the organization, but we expected this.” Cincinnati needed leaders with this attitude to fix a broken Bengals culture and boy, did we get them.
The past three weeks have been surreal. Whatever happens on Super Bowl Sunday, this city is eternally grateful to this Bengals team. I know I am.
Who Dey?!
(*) To my wife’s credit, she always believed in this Bengals team
