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.

[Hoofhearted]

The thing I do agree with Fred and others on around this is, just because we haven't won a PO game in that long doesn't mean we're not capable of doing it next year or following year. All you need is one magical run. The past doesn't dictate the future, but as you have laid out it does give us a general idea (that's the entire reason of using data). And to a lesser extent, I just like watching football; My dad, grandpa, brother and cousins have been Bengals fans since birth, and I don't plan to skip this team because we're mediocre. I accept it as it is and hope it changes. I don't let things I cannot control dissuade my enthusiasm of watching football. I did enjoy this research tho. Good job.

[THE PISTONS]

Sadly the magical run thing is an extreme outlier.

The way the Bengals build their roster, almost exclusively through the draft will rely on us to hit on A LOT of draft picks over a 5 year span and get big contributions from players on rookie contracts to win...and it isn't sustainable unless we keep hitting on draft picks.

After 2015, we lost A LOT of our core players to free agency and didn't replace them.

It is honestly a tough model to make work. Now, if we had a Tom Brady at QB, then we could shuffle different players in and out and he'd make them better. But we don't. Same with having a great coach like Belicheck.

[fredtoast]

No one ever said "playoff wins: is a meaningless statistic. I just mock people for using that as the ONLY way to measure success.

There is also a strong correlation between regular season wins and Super Bowl wins, but some people never mention wins because it does not make the Bengals look as bad over the las 10-15 years.

And we could just look at Championships won over the last 27 years, but again that does not make the Bengals look as bad because a majority of teams have not won a championship in that period.

But some people ignore the other measures and only use ONE measure for success. And it is not coincidence that it is the one measure that makes the Bengals look the worst.

Over the last decade the Bengals have the 14th best record in the league. That is not good enough and no one should be satisfied with that. But at the same time it is not possible for a team to have a better record than a majority of NFL teams without doing something right. I keep hearing how we had the worst coaches, we can't draft, and we don't sign free agents. That can not all be true if we are winning more games than most other teams in the league.

[THE PISTONS]

(04-04-2019, 10:28 AM)fredtoast Wrote: No one ever said "playoff wins: is a meaningless statistic.  I just mock people for using that as the ONLY way to measure success.

There is also a strong correlation between regular season wins and Super Bowl wins, but some people never mention wins because it does not make the Bengals look as bad over the las 10-15 years.

And we could just look at Championships won over the last 27 years, but again that does not make the Bengals look as bad because a majority of teams have not won a championship in that period.

But some people ignore the other measures and only use ONE measure for success.  And it is not coincidence that it is the one measure that makes the Bengals look the worst.

Over the last decade the Bengals have the 14th best record in the league.  That is not good enough and no one should be satisfied with that.  But at the same time it is not possible for a team to have a better record than a majority of NFL teams without doing something right.  I keep hearing how we had the worst coaches, we can't draft, and we don't sign free agents. That can not all be true if we are winning more games than most other teams in the league.

The fact that you think 14th which is the absolute best 10 year span you could find over MB's tenure as owner is 'not good enough and no one should be satisfied with that' proves my point.

Are we better than some teams over the last 12 years? Yes.
Are we elite? No.
Are we good? No.
Is it 90's level bad? No.
Do I realize the Browns were 0-16 one year? Yes - I'm aware.

We're 14th in a league of 32 teams. We're in the middle. We're mediocre.

Other teams win Playoff games. Most other teams have played in a SB. I want that for the Bengals!

[*Nately120*]

Playoff wins aren't the only stat that matters, but it essentially means even in our best years in the Mike Brown era we can't claim to have finished higher than 12th place in the league.

But we can look beyond the playoff drought in order to show that we don't look at one single thing. We could say in the Mike Brown era we have seen 0 playoff wins, 0 SB wins, 0 AFC champion titles, 0 HOF players, 0 HOF coaches, 0 new GMs to get hopeful about, and that's just off the top of my head.

Franchises, like people, have a tendency to set their own ceiling. We want a playoff win like Browns fans want an 8 win season, like Bills fans wanted to just make the playoffs 2 years ago, and so on. This is our ceiling because it's where we've been stuck for the past 14 years.

Making the playoffs didn't fix the Bills, going 8-8 won't fix the Browns, and winning a playoff game won't fix the Bengals but it'll at least get us over a hurdle that's been in place for decades. It isn't our fault that we recognize the very visible ceiling that we keep hitting our heads on.

[THE PISTONS]

(04-04-2019, 11:06 AM)Nately120 Wrote: Playoff wins aren't the only stat that matters, but it essentially means even in our best years in the Mike Brown era we can't claim to have finished higher than 12th place in the league.  

But we can look beyond the playoff drought in order to show that we don't look at one single thing.  We could say in the Mike Brown era we have seen 0 playoff wins, 0 SB wins, 0 AFC champion titles, 0 HOF players, 0 HOF coaches, 0 new GMs to get hopeful about, and that's just off the top of my head.  

Franchises, like people, have a tendency to set their own ceiling.  We want a playoff win like Browns fans want an 8 win season, like Bills fans wanted to just make the playoffs 2 years ago, and so on.  This is our ceiling because it's where we've been stuck for the past 14 years.

Making the playoffs didn't fix the Bills, going 8-8 won't fix the Browns, and winning a playoff game won't fix the Bengals but it'll at least get us over a hurdle that's been in place for decades.  It isn't our fault that we recognize the very visible ceiling that we keep hitting our heads on.

Well under Mike Brown's tenure, we've been under .500 17 times.


We've been over .500 7 times. (All during Marvin's tenure as HC.) (Marvin was under .500 5 times and .500 even 3 times. So 7 winning seasons. 8 non-winning seasons.)

That's the track record for regular season.

[*Nately120*]

(04-04-2019, 11:17 AM)THE PISTONS Wrote: Well under Mike Brown's tenure, we've been under .500 17 times.


We've been over .500 7 times. (All during Marvin's tenure as HC.) (Marvin was under .500 5 times and .500 even 3 times. So 7 winning seasons. 8 non-winning seasons.)

That's the track record for regular season.

Right, and the franchise sets the standard of success the fans hope for.  We just wanted to go 8-8 in the 90s and early 2000s and we got it.  Then we wanted to make the playoffs, then we wanted to win a playoff game.  Now we are on 3 losing seasons in a row and we are going into this season with the idea that ZT's first year will be a success if he can just win 9 games. We are back to just wanting to have a winning season...sure we want to win it all, but we will be happy with 9-7. 9-7 would be good for us, great for the Browns, and a nightmare for the Patriots. It's all relative.

Like I said in another thread, I have friends who are Steelers/Penguins/Pirates fans.  They go into football and hockey seasons with the expectations that the team should do something in the post-season and contend for a title.  When it comes to baseball they just hope the Pirates are watchable and they'd be elated to see them break .500.  Expectations.

[*ochocincos*]

To me, these are the tiers of success:

1) Avoid a losing season (8-8)
2) Have a winning season (9-7 or better)
3) Make the playoffs
4) Advance in the playoffs
5) Make conference championship game
6) Make a Super Bowl
7) Win a Super Bowl

So if you're talking about "success," it's relative. Compared to those struggling with 1, 2, and 3, the Bengals have been ahead of the pack. It's when comparing them to those with 4-7 that they start being considered "losers."

[*Synric*]

The playoff record for all 32 teams is 0-0 right now. 2019/2020 is the only season that matters.

What happened in the 90s, 2000s, or even 2018 does not effect the upcoming season so there's really no point in crying over spilt milk...You clean it up and move on.

[*Nately120*]

(04-04-2019, 11:38 AM)Synric Wrote: The playoff record for all 32 teams is 0-0 right now. 2019/2020 is the only season that matters.

What happened in the 90s, 2000s, or even 2018 does not effect the upcoming season so there's really no point in crying over spilt milk...You clean it up and move on.

Ehh, I get the "focus on the now" mindset, but it's hard to say the past doesn't matter when a damning pile of evidence shows our struggles come from Mike Brown being our past, present, and future(?)

[*ochocincos*]

(04-04-2019, 11:43 AM)Nately120 Wrote: Ehh, I get the "focus on the now" mindset, but it's hard to say the past doesn't matter when a damning pile of evidence shows our struggles come from Mike Brown being our past, present, and future(?)

I agree. While the past doesn't fully dictate what the present will hold, it's important to analyze past results to see if there are any trends that might uncover some poor habits that could be improved.

[BengalChris]

(04-04-2019, 10:21 AM)THE PISTONS Wrote: Sadly the magical run thing is an extreme outlier.

The way the Bengals build their roster, almost exclusively through the draft will rely on us to hit on A LOT of draft picks over a 5 year span and get big contributions from players on rookie contracts to win...and it isn't sustainable unless we keep hitting on draft picks.

After 2015, we lost A LOT of our core players to free agency and didn't replace them.

It is honestly a tough model to make work. Now, if we had a Tom Brady at QB, then we could shuffle different players in and out and he'd make them better. But we don't. Same with having a great coach like Belicheck.

And, of course, you need a great owner who lets football people be football people and who realizes that just because he inherited the team or bought the team doesn't immediately make him a football person.

[*Nately120*]

(04-04-2019, 11:57 AM)BengalChris Wrote: And, of course, you need a great owner who lets football people be football people and who realizes that just because he inherited the team or bought the team doesn't immediately make him a football person.

I don't think Mike Brown thinks he is a football person, moreseo he just runs the franchise as he wants and in a manner which makes him and his family and friends the most money/security.  If Mike Brown really thought he was a football person there is a chance he would have wised up in the past 25+ years and snapped out of it.

Basically, in order for Mike Brown to really believe he is trying his best to win he would have to be legitimately insane, and I don't think he's insane. 

[*Synric*]

(04-04-2019, 11:47 AM)ochocincos Wrote: I agree. While the past doesn't fully dictate what the present will hold, it's important to analyze past results to see if there are any trends that might uncover some poor habits that could be improved.

You have to do that win or lose superbowl or 0-16. That's called watching tape but that is not what this thread is about. It's about does winning or losing effect the next season. It doesnt. 

[*ochocincos*]

(04-04-2019, 12:07 PM)Synric Wrote: You have to do that win or lose superbowl or 0-16. That's called watching tape but that is not what this thread is about. It's about does winning or losing effect the next season. It doesnt. 

I disagree because it matters how/why you won or lost.

[THE PISTONS]

(04-04-2019, 11:47 AM)ochocincos Wrote: I agree. While the past doesn't fully dictate what the present will hold, it's important to analyze past results to see if there are any trends that might uncover some poor habits that could be improved.

Yes. Clearly amount of playoff wins are directly correlated to Super Bowl wins with the Top 11 teams in playoff wins since 1991 winning Super Bowls.

And the lowest 10 teams in wins only having 1 Super Bowl between them.

When you have a de facto GM who hasn't won a single playoff game, you can't really hope for a Super Bowl. The best you can hope for is apparently a statistic that shows we have the 14th best record over our best 10 year span under his ownership!   

We're #14! Put that on a foam finger and sell it in the gift shop!

[THE PISTONS]

(04-04-2019, 11:57 AM)BengalChris Wrote: And, of course, you need a great owner who lets football people be football people and who realizes that just because he inherited the team or bought the team doesn't immediately make him a football person.

That does seem to be a trend where owners that Micromanage Teams don't have success.

Probably rightly so as what are the odds that they would be able to (in some cases) make their money in other industries AND have great football minds?

In the Bengals case it is: What are the odds that your father would be a great football mind and that the kids would have the same great mind.

[THE PISTONS]

(04-04-2019, 12:07 PM)Synric Wrote: You have to do that win or lose superbowl or 0-16. That's called watching tape but that is not what this thread is about. It's about does winning or losing effect the next season. It doesnt. 

The statistics clearly show that if you want to win a Super Bowl...that having a track record of winning playoff games matters.

And not winning playoff games in the past directly influences a teams chances of winning future SB's.

[*Synric*]

(04-04-2019, 12:09 PM)ochocincos Wrote: I disagree because it matters how/why you won or lost.

I agree with you to a point watching tape is important and I dont mind discussions about the previous year but every team is different moving forward.


But the OP is saying that Denver winning superbowls in 1998 and 1999 with John Elway effect how the 2019 Broncos win or lose record...