Once a perennial Super Bowl contender in the making, the Bengals have instead suffered three seasons without a playoff berth.
But while the team has gone from two straight AFC Championship Game appearances and one Super Bowl showing across the 2021-22 campaigns to a 6-11 squad mired in a postseason drought, Cincinnati is actually set up with the most continuity in the AFC North -- the only team in the division with a returning head coach and an offense that's gotten it done before.
That's partly why wide receiver Tee Higgins feels locked in on improving rather than angry with recent results.
"I definitely think it will be more on the hyper-focused side than, you know, pissed off," Higgins told the Cincy Jungle's Orange and Black Insider Bengals podcast. "Obviously, we're pretty upset we haven't made the playoffs in a long time, but I think it's more hyper-focused because most of the guys on the offensive side of the ball are coming back."
"So, obviously we need to lock back in and keep doing what we've been doing the past three years, and just putting it together as a whole, as a team. Just like how if you've got special teams, offense and defense working together -- you need all of that. … As long as we do that, I feel like we'll be OK and make that run late in the season."
Earning victories as a cohesive unit has been the primary problem of late for the Bengals, who ranked 30th in points allowed and 31st in total defense in 2025. Since putting together a top-10 scoring defense during their last trip to the playoffs, the Bengals haven't finished a season better than 21st in the category. Over the past two seasons, Cincy has lost seven games in which it scored at least 33 points.
Defensive woes have hardly been the only issue, though. Quarterback Joe Burrow missed nine games in 2025 and seven in 2023. Higgins has also dealt with his fair share of injuries, and the Bengals are notoriously slow starters. This past season was the first since the 2021 campaign in which Cincinnati didn't dig itself an 0-2 hole, although Burrow's Week 2 turf toe injury subsequently sent the team into a tailspin anyway.
The Bengals traded for Joe Flacco to help find at least a modicum of success while Burrow remained out. They showed potential in games with Flacco and when Burrow returned down the stretch -- enough so that Ja'Marr Chase still finished with 1,412 receiving yards and Higgins totaled a career-high 11 touchdown catches. Running back Chase Brown also logged the first 1,000-yard rushing season of his career, even after averaging a measly 2.7 yards per carry through the team's first six games and failing to eclipse 50 rushing yards in any game during that span. Regardless, the hill from 3-8 when Burrow returned to playoff team ultimately proved too steep to climb.
As Higgins alluded too, all of those offensive playmakers are due to come back. Chase and Higgins both signed big-money extensions last offseason, Burrow is on the books through 2029 and Brown is entering the last year of his rookie deal.
"We'll be motivated, man. We've had two years where our playoff hopes haven't been in our control, so that's definitely a focus going into this coming season is being in control, starting fast and winning the games that matter -- which is every single game," Brown said in the joint interview with Higgins.
"The '24 season and the '25 season, you look at some of those scores and kind of be like, hey, this could easily have gone our way. That's what we know we're capable of, is winning those tight games and playing deep into the playoffs and making a Super Bowl run."
Every team in the NFL can play the "what if" game.
The Bengals have the pieces to turn hypotheticals into reality, though, and Higgins and Brown are heading into the offseason laser-focused on making it happen.
