Were the pre-Joe Bengals as bad as most think?

[*Nately120*]

(01-31-2023, 11:47 PM)The American Dream Wrote: Before Burrow we were the textbook definition of mediocre. Not great by any means, but not total crap either.

Just thankful now we have all the right pieces from the top down to compete year in and year out.

The 5 straight one and dones to kick off the Dalton/Green era are interesting.  The first two were encouraging, even in a loss because we were a young team that had purged the 2010 season and the frustrations of the Palmer/Chad era.  I feel like the tide turned once we lost to the Chargers, because that's when people were really on board and we were supposed to finally make some noise in the post season.  We followed that with losses to the Colts and Steelers that were helped along by key injuries, but still...as any Bills fan from the 90s will tell you, showing the entire NFL that you have a clear ceiling is a way for what was once a level of success to start looking like failure.

Keep in mind too, if we beat the Chiefs two years in a row in the AFC title game in their stadium that would have made their own usually impressive post seasons start to look very "fail" as well.  It's all relative.