Bengals Are The SMARTEST Team In the AFC ???

[CJD]

(02-18-2024, 05:24 PM)Soonerpeace Wrote: 75% was random I don’t keep tabs. A lot follow from LSU because of Joe and Jamar. I understand the wanting of a Super Bowl. I don’t understand with the great turnaround the I don’t care about any success whatsoever unless it results in a Super Bowl mentality. Big difference. Winning in the NFL is hard on a regular basis. I don’t think Zac gets enough credit on here. He became the head coach late and it inhibited his hiring. Many however are still here and the continuity strong. And he didn’t hit on all of them but he did on quite a few.  He was young out the gate and the roster aging and the culture not great. In year 3 he made the Super Bowl. Most predicted the towering inferno when Joe went down but they went 4-3. Yep I think there are a lot on here that really don’t give 2 ______ until a SB is won. Any success short of that is meaningless.

I think you may be setting the bar too low relative to the team's potential.


Before Joe Burrow, all I wanted was a single playoff win. I didn't even dare hope that we'd be Super Bowl contenders because it felt like the team was not capable of even competing for that level of success since we had not won a playoff game in going on 30 years (my entire lifetime).

So from 2011 to 2019, I just said "let's just win a playoff game. Get over that hump. And then, after we get used to winning playoff games, maybe we can build on that into real success."

We made the playoffs 5 years in a row, and each time I was just praying we'd get that 1 win. 

and we never did.

That's what made 2021 so surreal. We got the first playoff win in 30 years...then we got another...and another....and then we were literal minutes (and 1 penalty) away from winning the first Super Bowl in franchise history.

In 2022, I didn't dare to think that should be the new standard. Despite the success in 2021, we still felt like underdogs, since so much of our success was predicated on big bombs to Chase and the defense inexplicably shutting down Patrick Mahomes in the 2nd half of the AFC CG.

But, as the season went on, we stopped being a chippy under dog and started behaving like a true contender. 

By the time we reached the playoffs, we had not lost a game in almost 3 months. We felt like the favorites rather than the underdogs.

And we played like it in Buffalo (the Baltimore game was a bit iffy, but that's division rivals for you).

The problems occurred when we were entering the AFC CG with half an Oline, and then more injuries followed iirc.

Despite it all, we still only lost by 3 points and should have gone to overtime if not for a horrendous punt and a really bad penalty.

Coming into the 2023 season, why would Bengals fans settle for something less than winning or at least reaching the Super Bowl?

That doesn't really make sense to me. Of course that's the new goal. We've already crushed all the other goals. It's time to get that SB.

Admittedly, some fans go a little crazy, calling for Zac to be fired for this or that. But that's literally every fan base. I don't think having high expectations is equivalent to not appreciating the success we've had.