For the past few years, the Cincinnati Bengals have been one of the most consistent franchises in the league when it comes to the regular season. Head coach Marvin Lewis always able to guide his Bengals to the postseason with five straight trips to January since 2011.
However, those playoff trips always followed swift playoff exits as the Bengals have lost in the Wild Card in each of those five postseason appearances. No franchise has squandered playoff appearances more than the Bengals in the past 20 years as Lewis has lost all seven playoff games in his time as the head coach.
Now with the Bengals at 2-3 early in the season, it looks as if the Super Bowl window in Cincinnati is closed for good. A terrible start to 2016 now seems to be the end of a half-decade streak of playoff appearances for a Bengals team that has struggled against top competition this season.
Losses to the Pittsburgh Steelers, Denver Broncos and Sunday’s loss to the Dallas Cowboys have started to expose the Bengals as a team that may no longer be talented enough to win games over the NFL’s best. All three of their losses coming by over a touchdown against teams that are currently in the playoff hunt is more than enough evidence to suggest this Bengals team is a pretender in the AFC this year.
The Bengals have looked like a lesser version of themselves this season as a team that built around veterans who had been in the picture for much of their five-year run hasn’t been nearly as effective. Particularly on offense, where a running game that once thrived with Giovani Bernard has just one game with over 100 total rushing yards as a unit.
Those struggles on offense are due to the departure of offensive coordinator Hue Jackson, who left to become the head coach of the Cleveland Browns after he built the Bengals offense into one of the best in the league. Jackson got the most out of the weapons the Bengals had when he was working with the running backs since 2013 and then as the offensive coordinator for the 2014 and 2015 seasons, but now the ground attack looks stagnant in his departure.
Without the balanced attack they have had in recent years, the Bengals offense has struggled mightily to score points this season. All three of their losses this season have featured the Bengals failing to reach the 20 point mark, which makes it easy to see why they are faltering so far. A lack of points on the scoreboard from an offense that isn’t adjusting well to a new offensive coordinator has been the biggest issue for a Bengals team that is in big trouble in the early AFC playoff picture.
At 2-3 and headed to New England to face the Patriots, the Bengals have a significant hole to climb out of to get back into the division as well as the Wild Card hunt. Unless they can upset Tom Brady as nine-point Vegas underdogs, the Bengals will be at 2-4 before they can start to focus on a bounce back from the canvas as their playoff hopes are currently grim. The consequence of three losses in all of their games against playoff contenders this season could be that by the time the Bengals find a spot in their schedule to string together some wins it will be too late.
Where the Bengals playoff hopes will likely fall will be in their remaining games in the AFC North as they will need at least four wins out of their final five games against their division if they want to chase down the Steelers. A task that will require sweeps of the Browns and the Baltimore Ravens, but could be necessary as the AFC Wild Card spots could once again have a 10-win minimum in a deep conference.
It will be up for the leaders on the Bengals team that have led this franchise to the playoffs again and again to find the answers to what has been a dismal stretch to open the season. To completely count out a team that has made the playoffs year after year would be a mistake, but after three convincing losses it certainly looks like the Bengals’ Super Bowl window is slammed shut. Marvin Lewis has a ton of work ahead of him if that window is ever going to open again with this current core of players as the chance of a run to a championship has passed the head coach by after years of Wild Card heartbreak.
