The Cincinnati Bengals Are One Game Away From Doing The Impossible

Written by Lachlan Sherriff

Meet the Cincinnati Bengals. In a week and a bit, they're playing in Super Bowl 56. It's a pretty good team. Joe Burrow is the coolest guy in the league and he can back it up on the field. Ja'Maar Chase and Tee Higgins isthe best young receiving duo in the league. Vonn Bell has cemented himself as a Bengals hero after his interception last week, while Evan McPherson has ice in his veins and could be the next Justin Tucker. The O-Line is terrible, but it doesn't matter. The Bengals are one game away from the Lombardi.

But two years ago, Burrow, Chase, Higgins and McPherson were all in college. The team instead had veteran Andy Dalton at QB1. He led them to 2-14. That's two wins and fourteen losses. And yet seven hundred days later, Cincinnati is going to play the Rams in the super bowl. And if they win that super bowl, then the Bengals are going to do something never seen before.

In American sports, every team is going to suck at some point. The Golden State Warriors once looked like this. The Boston Red Sox went eighty-six years between a title once. Even the Patriots never won a championship before Brady came (happy retirement, Tom!)

When a team sucks, they can get better through the draft. The worst teams will get higher picks and the better teams get lower picks. The league's idea is that in five years time a team with the worst record will have a better chance of winning the super bowl then the current champions. This doesn't always happen, but that's just coz some teams, like the Lions, are cursed.

But rebuilds take time.

The average rebuild from bottom to top can take about six years. And here’s a graph to prove it.

Here’s a graph that shows every team’s shortest time period between having the first pick and winning the Super Bowl. Just for reference, we’re not counting a team trading for the first pick, they had to be the original owner. The Cowboys, Jets and Ravens have the smallest time period, with only four years between the two incidents in question, with the Steelers and Broncos in second with fifth. Meanwhile the Eagles have the worst timeline, with 67 years between the 1949 NFL draft and their lone Super Bowl in 2018. And you guessed it, Chuck Bednarek wasn’t in that 2018 team. Now if the Bengals win it in 2022, where do they end up on this list?

In only two years the Bengals may go from the worst team in the league, to the Super Bowl winners, which is half the amount of time it took for the Cowboys, Jets and Ravens to do it. So how did it take the Bengals only two years to beat the draft?

Every Bengals draft pick from the last two years are still on the team. Obviously not everyone is making an impact just yet. Joseph Ossai is a third round pick with a big future, but is yet to play a game after suffering a season-long achilles injury. Wyatt Hubert also is yet to make his debut due to injury, while other guys towards the later end of the draft haven’t played much, especially these playoffs. But there are five guys on the Bengals from the last two drafts who are making a huge impact in these playoffs. One of those guys is linebacker Logan Wilson, who was drafted by Cincy with pick 65 in 2020. Wilson’s big moment this year was his interception at the end of the Divisional Round game against the Titans, but he's done much more over the last month. Wilson is leading the Bengals in tackles this postseason with thirty, despite injuring his shoulder in week thirteen, which could've sidelined him for the rest of the season. What I like about Wilson is he's a perfect modern linebacker. His speed, athleticism, and coverage all make him a lethal threat, and I can't wait to see how his career plays out.

Then we've got Evan McPherson, who you may know better as Money Mac. McPherson joined the Bengals last year when Cincinnati made the cardinal sin of drafting a kicker, which some fans will claim is single handedly the worst thing an NFL franchise can do. Which doesn't make sense to me at all. Kickers can win you matches. If a good one's right there, take him. Better than some receiver or lineman who's gonna be out of the league in two years.

Anyway, as I mentioned, kickers can win you games and McPherson has already won five in his short career, including two in the postseason. Under the most incredible circumstances, the rookie came out at the end of the divisional round game vs Tennessee and struck a 52 yard field goal to end the Titans championship dreams. His 31 yard kick last week against the Chiefs was a bit easier, but nonetheless, the kid's got ice in his veins. Money Mac has kicked forty from a possible forty points these playoffs, making twelve field goals and four PATs, and currently has a shot to break former Colts kicker Adam Vinatieri's record of the most playoff points by a kicker, which he set in 2006 with 49. I truly believe that McPherson is the next great kicker in the NFL, and he might already go down in history by the time these playoffs are over.

The next two players I'm gonna talk about together. They are, obviously, Tee Higgins and Ja'Marr Chase. Higgins has made an impression that no one was expecting in his two year NFL career. After falling out of the first round of the 2020 draft, Tee was selected by Cincy at pick 33, and hasn't looked back. He picked up 908 yards off 67 receptions in his rookie year, and has expanded on that after going 1,091 yards this past season. Chase had higher expectations entering the league, but has lived up to every bit of it. Chase has already had 1,455 yards and 13 touchdowns, and picked up this year's rookie of the year, which was definitely well deserved. Higgins and Chase are definitely a partnership worth watching in the future. Their styles compliment each other, they're both fun to watch and they're already achieving things together, after becoming the first receiver duo to 1,000 yards this year. If Chase and Higgins stick together and stay healthy, then NFL defenses are in trouble for the next ten to fifteen years.

And finally, Joe Burrow. What Burrow is doing right now deserves all the credit in the world and more. After tearing his ACL in week eleven of his rookie year, it would've been easy for Burrow to give up, live off the paycheck he already made, and have career. where he plays for half the league before he's 25. But he hasn't. Burrow came back better than before. He's thrown for 4,611 yards, 34 touchdowns, turned a four win team into a first seeded team in a division against the Steelers, Browns and Ravens, and has now thrown four touchdowns in three playoff games this year. Everything Burrow does is smooth. The way he can throw the ball long, how he moves like he never got injured in the first place, even his fashion style. It's all brilliant. And he's doing it without an O-Line. Remember, he got sacked nine times in a playoff game and still one. That's just incredible. Burrow has a bright future ahead of him, one that might just find him an MVP or two. For now though, he's got to focus on winning Super Bowl 56.