06-03-2022, 04:47 PM
(06-02-2022, 05:06 PM)Bengalfan4life27c Wrote: Many power rankings sites have us lower in the power rankings than they should. The reason these sites give is not due to talent or having a glaring weakness. The reason they give is due to our fluke success last year. That should not be relevant to our success this season if anything it would be a positive and not a negative.
Here is the point, and even though you refuse to acknowledge it the same rule is applied to all teams.
Whenever a team starts out 6-1 people will be saying they are good, but if the team has been a loser for a while no one is going to be saying they are the favorites to win the Super Bowl. They are going to say that 6 games is not enough to define a team. Especially if 4 of the wins were on scores in the final 30 seconds including 3 on the last play of the game. Or if the defense blew a 4th quarter lead in 3 of the games and had to be saved by the offense scoring in the final seconds.
And if you are generous enough not to count the browns loss we finished last year 6-1. 13 games into the season we were 7-6 and 15 other teams had at least 7 wins also. Our offense was 14th in yards and our defense was 17th. We only had 3 wins against teams that would finish with a winning record and 18 other teams in the league had just as many. After only 6 wins combined in the previous 2 seasons (and 5 straight losing seasons) Bengal fans were ecstatic with 7-6, but the rest of the league saw us as an average team struggling to even make the playoffs. And when they judge us now they look at the entire '21 season instead of just the last 7 games.
We are not being punished for our success. Instead we are doubted because of a combination of thins including our recent losing history, the small sample size of excellence (6 games), and the fact that so many of those 6 wins were by a razor thin margin.
