The

Cincinnati Bengals The Cincinnati Bengals are a professional American football team based in Cincinnati. The Bengals compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the league's American Football Conference (AFC) AFC North, North division. The c ...

franchise was founded in 1968 as a member of the West division of the

American Football League The American Football League (AFL) was a major professional American football league that operated for ten seasons from 1960 until 1970, when it merged with the older National Football League (NFL), and became the American Football Conference. ...

(AFL). The Bengals joined the

National Football League The National Football League (NFL) is a professional American football league that consists of 32 teams, divided equally between the American Football Conference (AFC) and the National Football Conference (NFC). The NFL is one of the ...

(NFL) as a result of the AFL–NFL merger before . This list documents the franchise's completed seasons from 1968 to present, including postseason records and results from postseason games.Note: The Finish, Wins, Losses, and Ties columns list can only regularity season game results and exclude any postseason play records. Regular and postseason records are combined only at the bottom of the list. The Bengals have played over 850 games in their history, including three conference championships, ten division championships, and fifteen playoff appearances. The franchise has experienced several extended periods of success in their history. These periods came from to when the Bengals qualified for the playoffs four times and played in two

Super Bowl The Super Bowl is the annual final playoff game of the National Football League (NFL) to determine the league champion. It has served as the final game of every NFL season since 1966, replacing the NFL Championship Game. Since 2022, the game ...

s, and from to 2015. However, during a fourteen-year span—1991 to 2004—the Bengals did not qualify for the playoffs. During this time, the franchise had nine seasons with ten or more losses, and three of those seasons the franchise had the league's worst record. Between

2005 File:2005 Events Collage V2.png, From top left, clockwise: Hurricane Katrina in the Gulf of Mexico; the Funeral of Pope John Paul II is held in Vatican City; "Me at the zoo", the first video ever to be uploaded to YouTube; Eris was discovered in ...

and

2015 File:2015 Events Collage new.png, From top left, clockwise: Civil service in remembrance of November 2015 Paris attacks; Germanwings Flight 9525 was purposely crashed into the French Alps; the rubble of residences in Kathmandu following the Apri ...

, the Bengals were more successful, posting seven winning seasons, three division titles and seven wild card playoff berths (including a streak of five consecutive playoff seasons, a first in franchise history). Despite the success, the Bengals did not win a playoff game between

1990 File:1990 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: The 1990 FIFA World Cup is played in Italy; The Human Genome Project is launched; Voyager I takes the famous Pale Blue Dot image- speaking on the fragility of Humankind, humanity on Earth, Astroph ...

and

2021 File:2021 collage V2.png, From top left, clockwise: the James Webb Space Telescope was launched in 2021; Protesters in Yangon, Myanmar following the 2021 Myanmar coup d'état, coup d'état; A civil demonstration against the October–November 2021 ...

, one of the longest droughts in league history. From

2016 File:2016 Events Collage.png, From top left, clockwise: Bombed-out buildings in Ankara following the 2016 Turkish coup d'état attempt; the impeachment trial of Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff; Damaged houses during the 2016 Nagorno-Karabakh ...

2020 2020 was heavily defined by the COVID-19 pandemic, which led to global Social impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, social and Economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, economic disruption, mass cancellations and postponements of events, COVID- ...

, the Bengals suffered five straight losing seasons, including having the league's worst record in the 2019 season (finishing 2–14 that season), before winning the AFC North and qualifying for the playoffs again in

, which included an

AFC Championship Game The AFC Championship Game is the annual championship game of the American Football Conference (AFC) and one of the two semi-final playoff games of the National Football League (NFL), the largest professional American football league in the world. ...

win and a berth in their first Super Bowl since the 1988 season.

Legend

Season records

Footnotes

* The 1982 season was a strike-shortened season so the league was divided up into two conferences instead of its normal divisional alignment. * The strike of

1987 File:1987 Events Collage.png, From top left, clockwise: The MS Herald of Free Enterprise capsizes after leaving the Port of Zeebrugge in Belgium, killing 193; Northwest Airlines Flight 255 crashes after takeoff from Detroit Metropolitan Airport, k ...

reduced the regular season schedule from 16 to 15 games.

References

General * * * * Specific

External links

Cincinnati Bengals season database
{{Cincinnati Bengals seasons

seasons