WHO DEY NATION
The Future Is Bright in Cincinnati
A Long, Dark Monday Can’t Stem the Bengals’ Optimism
For Cincinnati Bengals fans, the team’s improbable run to Super Bowl LVI was like a four-week-long fever dream. It filled you with a sweaty, anxious restlessness that kept you up at night wondering “what if?” What if the Bengals find a way to win? What if this is just their first Super Bowl in the Zac Taylor era, not the last? What if Carson Palmer hadn’t blown out his knee?
33 years is a long time to wait for a team to return to the Super Bowl, but Bengals fans are nothing if not patient. Making it through those 33 years meant living through the Dave Shula era, a lost Divisional game in 1991, seven lost Wild Card games, and the Carson Palmer knee injury at the hands of the hated Pittsburgh Steelers that fittingly sounded like a gunshot.
The Bengals had everything they needed to beat the Rams in Super Bowl LVI: a defense that played lights out football throughout the playoffs, an electric receiver in Rookie of the Year Ja’Marr Chase, and of course, Comeback Player of the Year Joe Burrow, whose pregame hat alone was worth at least three points.
They also had something far more difficult to measure: the support of the football world. Everyone, it seems, was a Bengals fan last night. Nobody, save for possibly the Hollywood elite, were pulling for the Rams.
In the end, the Bengals’ Achilles heel was precisely what every talking head in America warned them about about when they passed on choosing a left tackle in the first round of the 2021 NFL draft, an offensive line that couldn’t seem to keep Burrow from repeatedly getting bent in half, including one sack early in the fourth quarter that sent him limping off the field and millions of Bengals fans to their knees in prayer.
While Burrow returned to the game seemingly unscathed, the Rams’ Super Bowl record-tying seven sacks and an officiating crew that magically found their whistles in the last two minutes of an otherwise well-called game were simply too much to overcome.
Despite the loss, the Bengals, their loyal cadre of fans, and their fast-growing Burrow-loving support network, have everything to be hopeful for. They have a young team who set the bar high and refused to believe that they didn’t deserve everything they got this year, an improving draft and free agency track record, and really good juju.
You’ll hear a lot of teams call their fanbase their “Nation.” But in the Bengals’ case Who Dey Nation is in the process of becoming just that: the nation. The support, admiration, and karma that helped fuel this drive to the Super Bowl in Joe Burrow’s first full year as a starter is a trickle that’s about to turn into a flood.
You’re increasingly going to see the national pundits, lapsed fans of other teams, and Burrow jersey buyers all rally behind the lovable team from Cincinnati. And that’s when the fun will really begin. The Bengals bandwagon is a welcoming place, stocked with hearty, vocal Midwesterners who realize their time is now and there’s plenty of room for others.
Teams with that kind of support find a way to win repeatedly. They feel the energy in the air, and feed off of it. It drives both their decision making and their outcomes. The Bengals are becoming that team, right before our eyes. Who Dey, indeed.
