The Cincinnati Bengals Have Broken All The Rules

It was Week 7 of the NFL season and the Cincinnati Bengals walked into Baltimore and hammered the Ravens, a consistent AFC force and improved to 5-2.

Joe Burrow’s passing and Ja’Marr Chase’s run-and-catch brilliance left Baltimore’s secondary in ruins. Their 41-17 win in late October was the first moment this season where the Bengals began to be a serious Super Bowl contender. 

More than merely being a team which could slip into the back door of the playoffs with a No. 7 seed, the Bengals showed they might be able to win the very competitive AFC North and perhaps even emerge as a conference threat.

At the time, the Buffalo Bills and Kansas City Chiefs, who entered the AFC playoffs as the class of the conference, were struggling. The New England Patriots were a pedestrian 4-4 at Halloween while the Ravens were a month away from losing Lamar Jackson for the season. 

When the Bengals took a blowtorch to the Ravens and John Harbaugh, they announced themselves as players in the AFC. 

It wasn’t because of their defence. It was because they had Joe Burrow and Ja’Marr Chase, former teammates at LSU, now reunited as Bengal Tigers in the pro ranks, landing haymakers in the passing game. 

RELATED: Check out out Super Bowl hub for our range of Big Dance projections

Yes, the Bengals endured many ups and downs after that Baltimore win. In fact, they lost to the New York Jets the week after smoking the Ravens. Yet, when they defeated the Chiefs in early January – a regular-season result which significantly changed the AFC playoff bracket by knocking Kansas City out of the No. 1 seed position – they scored 38 points and controlled the ball. Their final drive was a textbook example of beating Patrick Mahomes by not allowing him to get his hands on the pigskin. 

When the playoffs began, it seemed obvious that if the Bengals were going to make a serious run at the Super Bowl – an unlikely prospect given the chops of the Chiefs and Bills, and the veteran experience of the Tennessee Titans – they would have to get out the blowtorch. They would need Ja’Marr Chase to go wild. They would need Joe Burrow to light up opposing defences with downfield strikes, given their lack of a running game.   

Cincinnati didn’t have to play its best to beat the Las Vegas Raiders in the wild card round, but in order to climb to the Super Bowl, the Bengals figured to need at least 31 or more points, probably 35 to 38, to win at least one game if not two. 

Naturally, in this crazy NFL season which has overturned the tables of logic every single weekend – from Week 1 all the way through Conference Championship Sunday, a parade of 21 consecutive journeys into a hall of funhouse mirrors – the Bengals reached Super Bowl LVI. 

That’s astounding enough on its own terms, given that the Bengals entered this season without a single playoff win since January of 1991. It’s shocking enough that the Bengals returned to the Super Bowl for the first time in 33 years, given that this young team had virtually no playoff experience from recent seasons.  

Yet, as stunning as it is that the Bengals are in Los Angeles this week for the big game against the hometown Rams, it’s a million times more unbelievable that Cincinnati leaned on its defence, and not its offence, to achieve the feat. 

Sure, the Bengals were always going to need something from their defence, but let’s be very clear about all this: The defence was the pillar of this Super Bowl run, not the “just be tolerable enough to enable the offence to win games” appendage to the Burrow And Chase Show. 

In this Cincinnati playoff run, Joe Burrow has been Joe Cool 2.0, the poised leader who doesn’t make mistakes. It’s a lot like Joe Montana of the San Francisco 49ers in the Bengals’ first Super Bowl, 40 years ago in 1982. That Super Bowl was won less by Montana’s brilliance and more by a 49er defence which produced turnovers and defensive stands deep in its own territory against the Bengals’ high-powered attack. Bill Walsh, Montana’s legendary head coach with those 49ers, was a certified offensive genius, but the Niners’ defence won Super Bowl XVI in Detroit, denying the Bengals a first Super Bowl championship. 

Fast forward to the present moment: Joe Burrow – like Joe Montana back then – has made the plays he has needed to make, but his defence has been the star of the show, not the warm-up act. 

RELATED: The LA Rams Are Charging And Changing The NFL In The Process

The Bengals picked off Ryan Tannehill of the Titans three times in a 19-16 victory in the divisional playoff round. If you had been told the Bengals would fail to score 20 points on the road, you’d have been convinced they would have lost. Yet, they didn’t. Burrow wasn’t bad in this game – he was sacked nine times, completely not his fault – but he just as obviously didn’t have a chance to be great, not when he was getting buried by opposing pass rushers. 

An inexperienced playoff team gave up nine sacks on the road and scored one offensive touchdown all game long … and won. 

The defence carried the freight. 

One week later, in Kansas City, against a quarterback who is 10 million times better than Ryan Tannehill, the Bengals’ defence once again came up with game-changing interceptions – one to spearhead a second-half comeback, the other to set up a conference championship-clinching field goal. 

The Bengals did come back from an 18-point deficit to beat the Chiefs, but the comeback came without downfield passing plays. 

One score came on a screen pass to Samaje Perine. The Bengals scored only one touchdown in the second half, even as they erased their deficit. That TD was a 27-yard drive after the defence picked off a panicky Mahomes. The Bengals’ defense, after allowing touchdowns on the Chiefs’ first three drives in 25 minutes of game time, conceded only three points in the game’s final 35 minutes plus an overtime possession. Cincinnati, with defensive end Trey Hendrickson constantly bothering Mahomes in the pocket, essentially shut out a juggernaut offence on the road after being completely overmatched in the first one and a half quarters. 

When has such an abrupt reversal ever occurred in NFL history? 

The comeback itself was extraordinary and is still hard to process, but the fact that it occurred against the AFC’s dynastic force – a team hosting a fourth straight AFC Championship Game, pursuing a third consecutive Super Bowl appearance, and owning the best quarterback in the NFL, operating at the height of his powers – is the even more mind-blowing aspect of the Bengals’ journey. 

19 points against the Titans. 27 points against the Chiefs, who had just slapped 42 points on the board against the formidable Buffalo Bills one week earlier. 

In a normal world, the Cincinnati Bengals wouldn’t have won either of those games against opponents with ample playoff experience and veteran players who knew the rhythms of the postseason. 

Nothing about this NFL season has been normal, however. The Cincinnati Bengals didn’t know better. They didn’t wait their turn. They didn’t need a “growing pains” loss in the AFC playoffs before taking the next step in the future, the next step the Bills and Titans are still waiting to take after falling short several times under their current head coaches, Sean McDermott and Mike Vrabel. 

The Bengals have broken all the rules. They have gone straight from outhouse to penthouse, much as they did in their first Super Bowl season of 1981. The 1980 Bengals were 6-10, last in their division. They soared from the shadows one year later. Similarly, after the 2020 Bengals went 4-11-1, the 2021 Bengals have risen all the way to the top of the AFC.  

It’s a miracle they’re even here in Super Bowl LVI, but the way the miracle happened is even more amazing than the joyride itself. 

Los Angeles, the site of Sunday's big clash, is home to Disneyland, the Magic Kingdom. The Bengals hope they and their rise-above-the-odds defence have one more Sunday of magic left against the Rams. 

Did you enjoy this article? Join our free mailing list to get the best content delivered straight to your inbox, or join the conversation by leaving a comment below or on the Stats Insider Twitter or Facebook page.