The Cincinnati Bengals are a franchise seemingly stuck in the lost limbo somewhere between very good NFL team and the league's elite.
Head coach Marvin Lewis' group has now reached the playoffs five out of the last six seasons, but they've yet to record a postseason victory since 1990.
They boast some elite pieces - wide receiver AJ Green, running backs Jeremy Hill and Giovani Bernard, defensive tackle Geno Atkins - but the sum of the parts has yet to make the whole more than a playoff also-ran.
Could the Bengals, despite some serious talent and despite the recent run of regular season success, be on the verge of breaking their four season postseason appearance streak?
"Four years running, NFL fans have been forced to endure an annual January stink bomb from the Bengals," writes Marc Sessler of NFL.com, who has Cincinnati atop his list of five teams unlikely to repeat as playoff participants next season. "There's talent on this roster, but Cincinnati remains anchored to Andy Dalton as a middle-of-the-pack quarterback whose ceiling was discovered autumns ago. With Pittsburgh growing more powerful on offense and Baltimore still a threat inside the dog-eat-dog AFC North, the Bengals will pay for standing pat at the most important position in sports."
The 27-year-old Dalton, set to enter his fifth NFL season, has developed a reputation as a good quarterback who can perform well when the pieces around him - like Green, Hill and Bernard - are taking the pressure off, but who wilts when asked to shoulder more of the load and/or when the lights get their brightest - in four postseason losses, Dalton has managed quarterback ratings of 51.4, 44.7, 67.0 and 63.4 and has thrown six interceptions and just one touchdown.
His limitations become abundantly clear the minute he's asked to do anything more than manage the game. While that's proven to be a path to at least some level of success in the NFL - cue the 2000 Baltimore Ravens film - it seems a yearly realization that high-level quarterback play is the real key to serious and consistent Super Bowl contention.
With those very Ravens a still-strong opponent - the present iteration, helmed by quarterback Joe Flacco, the seeming blueprint for what the Bengals wish they were - and the Steelers locking up quarterback Ben Roethlisberger for five more seasons and expecting another year of growth out of stud running back Le'Veon Bell, not to mention the underrated and difficult-to-beat Cleveland Browns defense - even if their offense is a mess - the Bengals may be looking at a very difficult road through the AFC North and to a postseason berth.
