History tells bettors to avoid Bengals futures amid likely Super Bowl hangover

The Bengals were a year ahead of schedule with last season’s stunning run to the Super Bowl as preseason long shots. But a loss on the big stage might set them back a year, too.

That may seem dramatic to say about one of the league’s most exciting young rosters, led by two 25-and-under stars in Joe Burrow (25) and Ja’Marr Chase (22). Those two are a key reason why Cincinnati is dealing at 20/1 (BetMGM) to win the Super Bowl just months after coming oh-so-close to winning its first championship in franchise history.

It’s easy to assume that this team will only get better over time, especially with Burrow’s expected growth after two stellar seasons and the entire roster strengthened by playoff experience. Yet it’s rarely that simple for Super Bowl runners-up, who often face a precarious path back to the Super Bowl — or even the postseason.

You don’t have to look back very far to see the woes facing teams coming off such a pivotal loss. The last three teams to lose in the Super Bowl — the Rams (2019), 49ers (2020), and Chiefs (2021) — all went under their win total the following season. The Rams and 49ers, in particular, missed the playoffs altogether despite entering that following season with double-digit win totals and among the shortest odds to win it all.

This isn’t a new phenomenon, either. Since 2001, only five of the 21 teams that lost in the previous year’s Super Bowl went over their win total, and 10 of them missed the playoffs entirely with eight posting losing records.

That doesn’t bode well for the Bengals, who own arguably the least complete roster of that bunch and are tied for the fourth-lowest win total (9.5) of any of those 21 Super Bowl losers. With low expectations come substandard results: The other five teams with a single-digit win total averaged just 7.4 wins in their encore season, with three going under their win total and ultimately missing the postseason.

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Clearly, the market tends to overvalue teams coming off a Super Bowl appearance, regardless of what the roster looks like the following season. We’ve seen that overcorrection right away over the past two decades: since 2000, teams coming off a title loss are a shocking 4-18 against the spread in Week 1 with 14 outright losses in 22 tries. All but six of them were favored.

You can all but forget about a team’s title hopes in the year after such a crushing loss. Since the Bills reached (and lost) four consecutive title games in the early 1990s, only the 2018 Patriots have made it back to the Super Bowl after losing it the year before. They’re one of just eight teams in NFL history to do that, with four of them coming before 1990.

Of course, the Bengals could shock the world and make it back to the big game, much like they did with last year’s unprecedented run. But don’t fall for the easy story of this young team making the next leap after a feel-good title run.

As history tells us, it’s never quite that simple.