The Cincinnati Bengals’ rebuild went about as well as anyone could have hoped. It was fewer than 22 months ago when Cincinnati held the top pick in the 2020 NFL Draft following a 2-14 season.
Now the Bengals are one win away from their first-ever NFL championship.
Their road to Super Bowl 56 has been anything but likely. Cincinnati went 4-11-1 last year behind 10 games of big numbers and few wins from rookie quarterback Joe Burrow — and then he went down for the season with a knee injury in Week 11. Neither the offense nor the defense were top 25 units in a 32-team league.
From 10,000 feet, the Bengals were trying to build an AFC champion on the foundation of a haunted swamp. There was bedrock hidden under that four-win campaign however, starting with Burrow and expanding wide enough to cover up what were once fatal flaws en route to a conference title.
How did we get here? It didn’t all just happen in 2021. You can trace the genesis of this Super Bowl team back to the winter of 2019. That’s when Cincinnati moved on from one of its most frustrating eras — and set the stage for a potential exorcism at Super Bowl 56.
