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All three times the Cincinnati Bengals have made the Super Bowl, Browns seemed better bet
The big game arrives with Cincinnati in again. It should have been Cleveland — all three times!
The Browns of summer were much likelier candidates to reach the Super Bowl capping the 1981, 1988 and 2021 seasons. The Bengals went instead.
Why did fortunes on Lake Erie and the Ohio River play out so differently? A quick look at the road to Ohio’s only three Super Bowls:
Super Bowl XVI
Cleveland’s 1980 “Kardiac Kids” overcame everything but the weather. A playoff game against the Raiders was too cold for Ice Road Trucking, much less football.
The quarterback and head coach both had brain freezes that prevented a last-second win, one that would have sent the Browns to the AFC finals on fire.
The “Kids” turned to 1981 with reigning league MVP Brian Sipe, with future Hall of Famers Ozzie Newsome and Joe DeLamielleure on offense, and with a defense coordinated by Marty Schottenheimer.
Cincinnati was sagging. The 1980 Bengals dropped to 3-9 with a blowout loss at Cleveland. The 1981 road opener was a 1-point win over a Jets team coming off a 4-12 year. A week later Cincinnati got shellacked at home by the Browns.
Sipe went cold, leading the league in interceptions — there was a six-pick game against Pittsburgh. Bengals QB Ken Anderson summoned up a career year. The reversal was complete by the time the Bengals won the rematch 41-21 at Cleveland.
In the AFC title game, in epic cold, Bengals linemen wore short sleeves. The San Diego Chargers got manhandled 27-7.
Cincinnati’s trek from 4-12 to a Super Bowl was complete.
Super Bowl XXIII
The 1988 Browns were coming off consecutive seasons in which they needed one more play to beat Denver in the AFC finals.
The Bengals were coming off a 4-11 year in which they lost twice to Cleveland by a combined 72-24 score.
Bernie Kosar, 24, seemed the type to take the next step, having shifted into superstar gear in the 1987 AFC finals at Denver.
“Every time I looked up he was scoring,” John Elway said.
Earnest Byner seemed headed for a sure touchdown that would have tied the game, late.
“I started thinking about the coin flip,” Denver coach Dan Reeves confessed.
The play turned into “The Fumble.”
The Browns, with the horses to do it, aimed to win big and get the 1988 AFC Championship Game back in Cleveland. An injury to Kosar in the opener changed everything.
Gary Danielson was the QB in a Game 2 loss to the Jets. Mike Pagel handled a Game 4 loss at Cincinnati.
Kosar returned for a while. He beat the Bengals in a game that got the Browns to 6-3. But he missed seven starts and was wobbly in some games he did play. He didn’t suit up for the playoffs against the Houston Oilers. The Browns lost 24-23 with Pagel and Don Strock at quarterback.
The Bengals emerged behind QB Boomer Esiason, running back Ickey Woods and receiver Eddie Brown. After their bungling 1987 they were the team that won home-field advantage for the 1988 playoffs, going 12-4. They reached their second Super Bowl with a 21-10 win over Buffalo.
Then came the great lull. Cincinnati compiled the NFL’s worst record for the 1990s. The Browns moved to Baltimore in ’96.
The expansion Browns have a 1-2 postseason record across 23 years. The Bengals made the playoffs in 2005, 2009, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014 and 2015 but were one-and-done each time.
The Bengals were out of the playoffs for five years and went 4-11-1 in 2020. The Browns finally made a move, going 11-5 in 2020, winning a playoff game at Pittsburgh and making Andy Reid’s mustache twitch in a second-round playoff game.
Cleveland’s Baker Mayfield entered 2021 coming off breakthrough progress. Cincinnati’s Joe Burrow was coming off major surgery.
The Bengals landed near the rear in everyone’s preseason power rankings. The Browns just needed to stay healthy.
More Cleveland Browns News:Browns’ best chance in 2022 starts with Baker Mayfield and Kevin Stefanski putting on their big-boy pants
Super Bowl 56
Analyzing the current postseason, why couldn’t it have been the Browns?
Owner Jimmy Haslam was more cautious than most when he said, around Labor Day, “On the hoof we look good. But it’s got to translate into wins, right?”
By Thanksgiving, Burrow to Ja’Marr Chase was the new big thing. Mayfield to Odell Beckham Jr. wasn’t anything.
The Browns were eliminated from even wild-card consideration with two regular-season games left. The Bengals scrapped away, won three playoff games, and are in the big game against the Los Angeles Rams.
Cincinnati can end an 0-for-55 drought and gain this proud football state’s first Super Bowl win.
Bengals come close, but can’t beat 49ers in their two previous Super Bowls
It could have been the Bengals twice before.
They came close with a former No. 67 overall draft pick, Anderson, at quarterback (Browns fans remember a No. 67 pick named Charlie Frye).
Anderson was coming off a four-year run in which his record was 20-32 when he delivered a 12-4 season in 1981. Playoff wins over the Bills and Chargers put the Bengals in Super Bowl XVI against the 49ers.
It was no exotic road trip — the game was in the Silverdome, 30 miles north of Detroit — but who cared once the Bengals got going?
Trailing 20-7 in the third quarter, Anderson hit Cris Collinsworth for a 49-yard gain that led to a fourth-and-goal from the 1. Pete Johnson, a battering ram from Ohio State, couldn’t get in.
The Bengals drove again, scoring this time to trailing 20-14 with most of the fourth quarter left.
The Bengals couldn’t stop the run, gave up two field goals, and lost 26-21.
Cincinnati drafted Boomer Esiason in 1984. His quarterbacking record through four seasons was 23-23, along the lines of Baker Mayfield’s 29-30.
In his fifth year, 1988, Esiason went 12-4 and was league MVP. Ickey Woods (1,066 rushing yards) and James Brooks (931) produced 29 touchdowns.
Playoff wins over Seattle and Buffalo resulted in another Super Bowl against the 49ers, this time in Miami.
It was rich theater for Carmen Policy, a future Browns executive who then was right-hand man to 49ers owner Eddie DeBartolo. They were transplanted pals Youngstown.
More from Carmen Policy:Carmen Policy says expansion Browns needed more time in the cellar. No, not that cellar.
The DeBartolo family would just have soon have bought the Browns, but they weren’t available.
Paul Brown, founding head coach of the Browns and Bengals, was still Cincinnati’s decision-making czar, at 80.
Policy set the scene for The Canton Repository last week:
“In our first Super Bowl against Cincinnati, the Bengals played a tough game. It was a special moment for our coach, Bill Walsh, who had been on Paul Brown’s staff in Cincinnati. Paul passed over Bill in choosing an offensive coordinator.
“As it was put to me, Paul thought Bill was smart enough to be a head coach in the NFL, but not tough enough.
“By the time Bill won his second Super Bowl (1984 season vs. the Dolphins), Bill didn’t have to prove himself to anyone. It was interesting when his third Super Bowl again was against Paul Brown’s Bengals.
“The Super Bowls against Cincinnati were serious moments in our existence. They were bookends to a period when our teams found a way to take adults to Disneyland.”
On Jan. 22, 1989, in Super Bowl XXIII, Bengals fans were thinking more Kings Island than Disneyland. Stanford Jennings returned a kickoff 93 yards to give Cincinnati a 13-6 lead late in the third quarter.
A Bengals secondary including Ray Horton and Solomon Wilcots stifled Joe Montana for most the the day. Montana, being Montana, ended the third quarter with a long completion to Jerry Rice and opened the fourth with a 40-yard pass to Roger Craig.
Soon it was 13-all.
Esiason drove the Bengals to a field goal and a 16-13 lead with 3:44 left. The kickoff pinned San Francisco at the 8. Montana found himself in a similar situation to Elway’s playoff game at Cleveland two years earlier.
Montana completed five straight passes, but a penalty left him in a second-and-20 close to midfield with 1:17 left. Rice responded with a GOAT kind of play, a 27-yard completion, to set up a 10-yard Montana-to-John Taylor TD pass with 34 seconds left.
The 49ers won 20-16. It would have been a great last hurrah for Paul Brown. Instead it was Bill Walsh’s day — his last day as an NFL head coach, as it turned out.
Mike Brown, born in Massillon in 1935, is the Bengals’ chief executive. Mike is not a young man. His father, Paul, who won brought three NFL championships to Cleveland before there was such a thing as the Super Bowl, is a misty presence at Super Bowl 56.
Brown was two years younger than Mike is now when he died on Aug. 5, 1991. His life story was told in many versions when the NFL came to Massillon for the funeral.
For what it’s worth, Bill Walsh was there.
Reach Steve at [email protected]
On Twitter: @sdoerschukREP
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