These Bengals Are The Best In Franchise History

Nov 05, 2015

UPDATE (Nov. 6, 7:39 a.m.): The Bengals added six points to their Elo rating on Thursday night, defeating the Cleveland Browns 31-10. Cincinnati’s current Elo rating, 1672, is the best in franchise history. The article below was written before Thursday night’s game.

According to our NFL Elo ratings — FiveThirtyEight’s pet metric for determining an NFL team’s strength at any given moment²¹ — the best Cincinnati Bengals team ever was the 1981 edition, led by quarterback and league MVP Ken Anderson. Those Bengals notched a franchise-best Elo rating of 1666.4 after they beat the San Diego Chargers 27-7 in the AFC championship game on Jan. 10, 1982. But two weeks later, they lost the Super Bowl to the San Francisco 49ers, and while Cincinnati has had a handful of good moments since, things have never quite looked as bright for the franchise as they did that winter day 33 years ago.

At least not until tonight — potentially. Going into Thursday’s matchup with the Cleveland Browns, the Bengals have an Elo rating of 1666.3, a mere fraction of a point behind the high-water mark set by the 1981 team. Any win, no matter how small the margin, would make the 2015 Bengals the best team in franchise history.

At 7-0, they’ve already started the season better than any other Cincinnati squad. Formerly maligned quarterback Andy Dalton ranks fourth in the NFL in Total QBR. And he has the support of a solid defense that ranks third in Pro-Football-Reference.com’s Simple Ratings and 12th in Football Outsiders’ DVOA metric. It’s a good recipe for a Super Bowl run, and Elo assigns the Bengals the NFL’s fourth-highest probability of winning it all this year (12 percent).

That 1981 Bengals club shared an important characteristic with this year’s team: great passing. If we scale every team’s per-play expected points added (EPA)²² such that the league has an average of 100 and a standard deviation of 15 each season, we can measure how effective a team’s offense and defense was in the passing and running games. This season, Cincinnati’s aerial attack leads the league with a 134 grade.²³ The 1981 team ranked second in the NFL with a score of 125. The only Bengals squad with a better passing offense than either 1981 or 2015 was the 1988 version, whose 136 grade was fueled by Boomer Esiason’s own MVP campaign.

Here are the best Bengals teams ever:

		OFFENSE		DEFENSE
YEAR	MAX ELO	PASSING	RUSHING	PASSING	RUSHING
1981	1666.4	125	111	98	98
2015	1666.3	134	94	110	87
1976	1663.3	110	108	121	112
1982	1644.4	120	108	92	92
2005	1642.7	121	112	94	87
1974	1632.7	116	110	105	78
2013	1630.7	106	93	126	115
1989	1627.0	120	118	104	87
1988	1626.1	136	133	106	89
1973	1618.7	117	111	106	100

An elite passing offense is where the similarities between the 1981 and 2015 Bengals end, though. While the 1981 squad also employed a solid rushing attack ²⁴ and a balanced defense that was essentially league-average against the run and the pass, the 2015 Bengals defend the pass well but aren’t particularly good at running the ball or defending against the run. Among historical Bengals squads, that profile more closely matches the strengths and weaknesses of the 1975 team, which was also good at passing and stopping the pass but lousy in the running game on both sides of the ball. (The 1975 Bengals ultimately lost in the divisional round of the playoffs.)

But if we’re looking for historical teams truly comparable to this year’s Bengals, we’ll have to leave Cincinnati. We can measure how similar any two team’s strengths and weaknesses are by using the differences in their EPA grades from above.²⁵

Here are the teams most similar to the 2015 Bengals:

			OFFENSE		DEFENSE
RANK	YEAR	TEAM	PASSING	RUSHING	PASSING	RUSHING	DIFF²
—	2015	Cincinnati	134	94	110	87	—
1	1970	San Francisco	134	92	108	92	4.4
2	2005	Indianapolis	133	98	113	95	14.5
3	2014	Green Bay	130	108	109	97	42.5
4	2013	New Orleans	123	95	111	87	58.3
5	2003	Indianapolis	126	98	99	86	67.5
6	2011	Green Bay	135	97	95	83	72.6
7	1983	Miami	124	96	118	91	75.9
8	1984	Miami	139	115	106	76	77.5
9	1988	L.A. Rams	125	103	113	101	79.8
10	2006	New Orleans	125	100	99	87	80.6
11	2009	San Diego	128	84	98	95	80.6
12	2015	New England	131	119	108	93	80.9
13	2008	Indianapolis	122	85	109	94	81.5
14	2001	Oakland	122	86	106	79	82.0
15	1995	Green Bay	126	87	97	90	84.2
16	1991	Washington	137	106	123	96	87.4
17	2004	Indianapolis	134	107	96	95	87.6
18	1979	Dallas	123	97	99	93	94.0
19	2012	Atlanta	120	86	108	86	96.6
20	2009	Indianapolis	120	91	108	97	100.5

According to this method, the 2015 Bengals’ closest historical doppelgangers were the 1970 San Francisco 49ers, with John Brodie playing the role of Dalton alongside little rushing support and a defense that was much better at stopping the pass than the run. The next five teams on the list are perhaps more interesting, if only because they’re more recent; there are two Peyton Manning-era Colts squads, two Aaron Rodgers-helmed Packers teams and a Drew Brees-led Saints team. We’re only halfway through the season, but this list puts the Bengals among great offensive company. Yet, like the comparison with the 1975 Bengals, it also lumps them in with a bunch of teams that went to the playoffs with impressive records only to lose before reaching the Super Bowl.

Cincinnati has an 89 percent probability of beating the Browns tonight and claiming its mantle as the best Bengals squad ever. But their real work may be saved for the playoffs, in bucking the trend toward postseason disappointment for teams constructed out of similar parts.

Tags: Andy Dalton Cincinnati Bengals Football NFL NFL Elo Ratings