Why are Playoff Wins Important? Bengals Edition

[THE PISTONS]

So, this debate has spread through other threads and I wanted to centralize it here. We're all familar with the 0 wins in 27+ years statistic. I think that most of us realize something has to be fairly drastically wrong for this to happen.

In the face of that, some people argue that Playoff wins are a meaninglist statistic meant to make the Bengals look bad. That regular season success or Super Bowls are a better measure of success.

I'll play along.

Why are Playoff Wins Important?

Winning a playoff game is really a common thing. We've elevated it to the mythical white whale here. But, to win a SB, you need to 1st win playoff games. Generally the teams with the most playoff wins, have won SB's. So if a Super Bowl is the goal, then playoff wins is a Key Performance Indicator...a checkpoint as to how close you are to that goal if you will.

Don't believe it? There is clearly a correlation.

Here's the playoff records 1991-2015. This is the Top 11 Teams in Playoff Wins over that span. (They've all won SB's!)

Patriots: 25-12 - (6 Super Bowl Wins.)
Packers: 19-16 - (2 Super Bowl Wins)
Steelers: 18-14 - (2 Super Bowl Wins)
Ravens: 15-8 - (2 Super Bowl Wins)
Broncos: 15-11 - (3 Super Bowl Wins)
Cowboys: 14-10 -(3 Super Bowl Wins)
49ers: 14-11 - (1 Super Bowl Win)
Colts: 14-15 - (1 Super Bowl Win)
Seahawks: 12-10 - (1 Super Bowl Win)
Eagles: 12-13 - (1 Super Bowl Win)
Giants: 11-7 - (2 Super Bowl Wins)

The bottom 10 Teams in playoff wins. Only 1 Super Bowl and that was the Bucs.

Raiders: 5-5
Jaguars: 5-6
Buccaneers: 5-6
Dolphins: 5-9
Bears: 4-6
Chiefs: 4-11
Texans: 2-3
Browns: 1-2
Lions: 1-8
Bengals: 0-7

While the NFL is a Worst to 1st league...clearly the statistics show that teams don't just come out of nowhere to win the Super Bowl.

Now lets examine the Bengals regular season success since 2000:

From 2000-2010 we have the 26th best regular season record:
26. Cincinnati Bengals 72-103 regular season record, .411 winning %, 2 playoff appearances, Playoffs: 0-2, 0 Super Bowl wins, 0 SB appearances.

From 2017 - Our 10 year record was 14th.
14. Cincinnati Bengals (83-74-3) https://www.foxsports.com/nfl/gallery/every-nfl-teams-10-year-record-ranked-32-1-010417
Now clearly, IF you wanted to make the Bengals look good...you couldn't pick a better 10 year span to analyze as we made the playoffs 6 times over that span. And 14th!

When this current decade is over, the losing seasons the past 2 years won't inflate that ranking much. We need a monster 2019 to move up.

Above are facts. Not opinions. Facts.

Feel free to debate away. Please provide statistics to back your argument like I did. I love seeing statistics and I'd love to debate this. But bring facts.