2011 NFL season: The rise and fall of the Cincinnati Bengals – NFL News
Cincinnati Bengals turned out to be the most difficult side of the National Football League (NFL), the American professional football premier league, to analyse and predict during the 2011-12 NFL season.
Throughout the season, Bengals kept winning and losing games with equal amount of uncertainty and unpredictability.
No one could have guessed that they would end up making it to the playoffs, through an out of the blue wild card, and then come straight out, losing to the postseason newbies, Houston Texans, so convincingly.
Even their fans kept guessing during the season if their team was winning or losing and, at many times, they found it least attractive to attend to their team’s home games.
The Paul Brown Stadium was full less than its 75,000 seating capacity for a number of games. At the end the team management had to make many offers such as buy one and get one free ticket to attract the fans to the stadium.
The Bengals started the 2011 regular NFL season with a win. It was against the Cleveland Browns on September 11, 2011. They then went to lose two straight games, one each, against the Denver Broncos, on Sept 18, 2011, and the San Francisco 49ers, on Sept.
25, 2011.
The side won its next five games and lost two more before ending the season at the regular patron of two wins and two losses.
At the end, they finished with a final score of nine wins and seven losses (9-7) on the league’s points table.
At one point of time they were well in race for the playoff berth and a potential contender to claim the American Football Conference (AFC) north division.
They had trailed only one point (6-4) behind their divisional archrivals, the Pittsburgh Steelers and Baltimore Ravens. Both sides were tied at 7-4.
Their lost in next two consecutive games pushed them out of the divisional title contentions and make their playoff berth chance even harder.
The team was then left to their luck for a last wild card chance into playoff. They luckily had the points table positions turned into their favour and their apparent competitor, the New York Jets, lost their final game to New York Giants.
It made them eligible for last wild card and they ended up reaching the playoff, leaving behind certain hopefuls such as the Tennessee Titans. The Titans inspite of their win in the last game of the regular season could not manage to reach the postseason.
All of sudden, the Bengals players, officials and fans, started hoping that the Bengals might turn things further into their favour. Some of them even hoped to reach Super Bowl for sure.
The Bengals management popped in to capitalize on the hype and offered incentives such as free refreshments to potential ticket buyers to have their home-ground full of spectators for their wild-card game.
Apparently, the incentives worked out and the stadium was full to its capacity in the Bengals vs Texas first playoff game. Some of the fans expressed joy of seeing their team becoming out of way contender for top NFL event, Super Bowl.
The poor souls, however, fell trapped to the same old performance by the Cincinnati Bengals. They found it too hard to swallow the fact that their team lost to the playoff’s new entry, Houston Texans by a clearer and wider margin of 10 to 31 points. It was
too late for them as well as for their team to redeem their lost position and probably pride, then.
With the start to end of the season, only thing that was seen relatively consistent was the Bengals ability to late recovery.
The team was a certain loser in first half of most of their games, but ended up winning, through their distinctive ability of late comeback. Otherwise, nothing is as notable in their past season as their wins and losses that were almost identical in the
number and frequency.
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