Burrow’s Bengals are a great young team. And they may never return to the Super Bowl

Underdogs win Super Bowls by creating turnovers, playing clean and entering the fourth quarter within a score with a quarterback capable of creating some off-script magic. The Bengals hit on all three on Sunday. The game was right there for Cincinnati to close out.

Then the Rams’ stars took over, and the flaws in a far-from-flawless Cincinnati roster were ultimately exposed – with a dose of help (as ever) from the league’s officials. The Bengals couldn’t tackle Cooper Kupp, at least not in time. And they could not block Aaron Donald, who led a defensive front that wound up dropping Joe Burrow seven times, a Super Bowl record. Sean McVay coached his Rams team into a hole, and his players dragged him out.

What now for Burrow and the Bengals? There is a feeling when a new team rises that they will be plenty more chances for them to win a Super Bowl. Once they break through, it is believed, they will continue to do so as long as the foundations remain in place. “We’re a young team,” Burrow said after the game on Sunday. “You like to think that we’ll be back in this situation multiple times over the course of the next few years. We’ll take this and let it fuel [us] for the rest of our careers.”

By any objective measure, the Bengals are primed for long-term success. They have one of the most promising, young rosters in the league – an all-world wide receiver room and talent dripping all over the defense. In Burrow, they have one of the NFL’s most valuable building blocks: a true franchise quarterback who can elevate average players into difference-makers. They head into the offseason with the third-highest amount of cap space in the league and a bevy of draft picks with which to try to upgrade a roster with obvious defects.

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