Bengals Karma

The Cincinnati Bengals have had a lot of bad things happen to them in the last twenty years. They have endured a decade plus of being the worst team in all of professional sports. They have missed chip shot field goals both in the playoffs and with the playoffs on the line. They have had high draft picks that suffered career ending injuries within the first year or two of their careers. They have had more than their fair share of draft picks that turned out to be absolute busts.

Then there was today! The Bengals had it all on the line against the division rival Baltimore Ravens. A win today and they secure a playoff spot with a rookie QB and rookie number one WR. A team that was picked by many to win the Andrew Luck sweepstakes and finish dead last in the NFL.

As a Bengals fan I know as well as many other Bengals fans that nothing comes easy with this team. Just look at last week the Bengals took a 23-0 lead into the 4th Quarter only to see them barely squeak out the win. So we all knew that today's game was not going to come easy. What we didn't know was that the Bengals would have to play both the Baltimore Ravens and the Baltimore Referees. I've never seen such a display of one sided officiating that basically tried to hand one team the game. This happening in what was basically a playoff game with a trip to the playoffs on the line for the Bengals and the second seed and a bye on the line for the Ravens.

In the first half the Baltimore Referees basically gave the Ravens a free TD by making three terrible calls in a row. The Ravens had to do nothing and the Refs marched them down the field before halftime so that all the Ravens had to do was complete one pass and they scored a TD. The Bengals then had a shot to tie at the end of the game despite being hosed the entire game. Andy Dalton throws one up to AJ Green in the end zone. Green probably would've went up and got the ball with one on one coverage but he was being blatently held down by his shoulder pads and an official was standing less than five feet away looking right at it and didn't throw the flag. Bengals lose instead of having the ball on the one yard line.

With the long suffering we Bengals have been through you would think that is it end of story. However something happened today that never happens to us Bengals fans. There was a scenario in which the Bengals could lose today and still get into the playoffs. This scenario included at least two teams that were favored today having to lose. As Bengals fans we were saying all week that they had to win this game, because we've seen this story play out before and things never fall the way they need to for the Bengals. Something miraculous happened, the Jets lost at one o clock which meant that if either the Raiders or Broncos lost then the Bengals were in the playoffs. Well both teams ended up losing.

As Bengals fans for years we've suffered through teams that were the laughing stock of the league. We've watched a star QB that we waited years for have his knee blown out on the first play of the playoffs. We've seen teams fall short of expectations. Basically everything that could go wrong has gone wrong, but today everything that could go right did go right in every game except the Bengals-Ravens game. That is what I call Bengals KARMA!