CBCincinnati Bengals

Franchise history

The Bengals were founded in 1966 by legendary coach Paul Brown, who had been forced out of the Cleveland Browns (the team he built and that bore his name) by new owner Art Modell in 1963. Brown secured an AFL expansion franchise for Cincinnati and began play in 1968, moving the team into the NFL with the 1970 AFL-NFL merger. He chose the name "Bengals" deliberately to link the new club to an earlier Cincinnati Bengals franchise that had played in the 1930s, giving the expansion team an immediate sense of local football heritage. The team adopted black, orange, and white, adding its distinctive tiger-stripe helmet design in 1981.

Cincinnati played at Nippert Stadium in 1968-69 before moving into Riverfront Stadium (later Cinergy Field) in 1970, sharing the multipurpose facility with baseball's Reds until relocating in 2000 to Paul Brown Stadium (renamed Paycor Stadium in 2022), a football-specific venue named for the franchise's founder.

The Bengals reached the Super Bowl twice in the 1980s under quarterback Ken Anderson and later Boomer Esiason, losing both times (XVI and XXIII) to Joe Montana's San Francisco 49ers by a combined margin decided in the final minutes. A long fallow period followed — including a stretch without a playoff win from 1991 through 2015 despite several postseason trips under coach Marvin Lewis — before the Joe Burrow era revived the franchise, capped by a run to Super Bowl LVI following the 2021 season, a narrow loss to the Los Angeles Rams. The team has been owned by the Brown family, currently led by Paul's son Mike Brown, since its founding.

Sources

• Pro Football Reference
• Wikipedia - Cincinnati Bengals
• Pro Football Hall of Fame - Bengals Team History

Runner-up finishes (3)

• Super Bowl XVI - 1981
• Super Bowl XXIII - 1988
• Super Bowl LVI - 2021

See the full super bowl champions list for the winner each of these years.