My first jersey was a black Peter Warrick No. 80. A year later, a white Warrick No. 80 popped up on a break-dancer in Pink’s music video for “Get the Party Started,” and that was the first time I had ever seen the Cincinnati Bengals referred to in pop culture as anything less than a joke.
The Bengals went 16-48 in my first four seasons as a fan. I picked them, voluntarily, with no family or location-based ties, in 1999. I was 11 years old, and 11-year-olds make bad decisions like investing in Akili Smith trading cards and Peter Warrick jerseys. So do the Bengals, of course, which should be no surprise because in those years, the Bengals might as well have been run by an 11-year-old.
MORE: Grading a decade of NFL drafts | Stop asking questions about Andy Dalton
But liking the Bengals was fun then, in the same way that losing yourself in a bad movie and laughing at all the serious parts can be fun. Jeff Blake throwing deep balls to Darnay Scott or Corey Dillon and Willie Anderson being way too good for the rest of the offense or Takeo Spikes being the entire defense. These were heroes to Bengals fans of a certain age, Bengals fans too young to remember Boomer Esiason’s prime and too old to have napped through Bruce Coslet and Dick LeBeau.
"So what the heck made you a Bengals fan?” was the usual question. Sometimes “heck” would be replaced by a more vulgar word. That’s fine. I got used to it, formed a routine: Well, you see, I grew up in New York City, a place without a football team, and was not much of a fan of that state to the south that had two football teams that claimed to be from New York City but definitely and totally aren’t anymore. And I liked Carl Pickens, and I liked the stripes on the sleeves, and I was 11, and I was dumb.
It’s a goofy story, but it’s the real one. And it’s a sympathetic story because the Bengals are the Bengals, which means they haven’t won a playoff game since I was 3 years old and didn’t know what a playoff game was. So I wore that Warrick jersey until the numbers started to crack along with my defense of drafting him fourth overall.
And now the Bengals are 8-0. And I don’t know what to do with myself.
My second jersey was a white Carson Palmer No. 9. Palmer was the quarterback for the first Bengals team I had reason to believe in — though certainly not the first I had put my trust in. I got the jersey for Christmas in 2004. I had asked my mother for a Levi Jones jersey, but my mother does not know anything about football or shopping for football apparel and probably could not find a left tackle’s jersey. I graciously accepted the franchise quarterback’s jersey because Palmer surely was going to be very good and so much better than all those other high NFL Draft picks like Smith and Warrick and Ki-Jana Carter and almost every other Bengals first-rounder from 1987, when I was born, to 2003.
And for some reason, Palmer was great. Jones was, too, along with Chad Johnson and T.J. Houshmandzadeh and a whole bunch of other players, particularly on the offense. And then Palmer’s knee ligaments ripped into a million pieces in the first Bengals playoff game I’d ever watched, in January 2005, and that was that. The Bengals could go back to being the Bengals again — 8-8, 7-9, 4-11-1.
Owner Mike Brown began overstocking the roster with talented but problematic players, to the point that it became a running joke when Bengals got arrested to compare them to the early-2000s Portland Trail Blazers. Palmer even got so angry in 2011 that he outright quit. I like to fashion myself as a forward thinker, but I also like to believe that a player shouldn’t quit on his team. So when Palmer finally got traded to the Oakland Raiders, his jersey found my apartment building’s dumpster. I was 23 years old, and 23-year-olds have standards.
A weird thing happened that 2011 season, though. A second-round quarterback with no upside named Andy Dalton got thrust into the starting job because Palmer was such a jerk. And the Bengals went 9-7. Then they went 10-6. Then they went 11-5. Then last year, they went 10-6 again. And suddenly Dalton had been to the playoffs twice as many times as Palmer had for the Bengals, and the defense looked like the defense that Marvin Lewis always was supposed to be coaching.
MORE: How the Bengals assembled such a dangerous offense
So the Bengals lost in their first playoff game, every time. They still are, after all, the Bengals.
(Here’s the short version of a complicated story of why Lewis kept his job for 13 seasons without winning a playoff game: The Bengals are the Bengals. Mike Brown is cheap. Lewis still is paid a stunningly low wage for the second-longest tenured NFL coach. Brown spent years not allowing Lewis to have much voice on personnel decisions, then watched his own personnel decisions not work. The 2011 NFL lockout also helped.)
A funny thing begins to happen to a fan base after 25 years of disappointment. The camps split three ways: You either mourn every loss like it’s your first, stop caring entirely or learn to appreciate small successes. Perhaps because of Brown’s ownership, perhaps because the team got stuck in the same division as the largely detestable Steelers and Ravens, perhaps because southern Ohio seems like a relatively chill place, it always seemed to me like us Bengals fans chose the latter. Those 8-8 seasons always were better if three of those wins came against Baltimore and Pittsburgh. And the Bengals definitely were not the Browns, which truly is the smallest success in the NFL.
Somehow, appreciating those small successes entrenched me further. For professional and personal reasons, I watch less of the NFL than ever before in my life, but I watch more of the Bengals at the same time. Every passing year, I grew further attached to players. A.J. Green, the franchise wide receiver, probably is my favorite. Andrew Whitworth, the new left tackle, is pretty high on that list, too. And I loved them even when they got clobbered by the Texans and Chargers and Colts, even when they legitimately seemed like the better team. Making the playoffs was enough of a reward. I used to own a Peter Warrick jersey.
But now the Bengals are 8-0. And I don’t know what to do with myself.
See, Dalton turned out to be pretty good. Green turned out even better. There’s a tight end named Tyler Eifert whom you definitely know if you play fantasy football because he leads the NFL in receiving touchdowns, so he is good, too. The defense seemingly gets bigger and deeper and stronger with every year, and Carlos Dunlap and Geno Atkins must scare opposing quarterbacks because they are ferocious.
All that has me wondering what kind of expectations I should be heaping upon this team because a team that can go 8-0 and beat the Seahawks and Steelers and Bills probably should be able to win a playoff game. I am, by nature, a fatalist and cynic, and the Bengals helped shape that in my formative years and then played right into it in my adulthood. Thankfully, the New England Patriots exist because they spare me any semblance of hope for a Super Bowl. But I’m getting comfortable enough now to expect something, and I’m even getting comfortable enough to do something about it.
So my next jersey will be an A.J. Green No. 18. And I hope to wear it to a playoff victory or three.
——
Adi Joseph is Sporting News' NBA editor. He mostly sticks to basketball on Facebook at AdiJosephNBA and Twitter at @AdiJoseph.
