Richard Skinner

rskinner@nky.com

Based on losing in the first-round of the playoffs each of the last three seasons and based on the way they’ve played in big games this season, it’s hard to blame Bengals fans if they have a hard time believing this year’s team can win a playoff game for the first time since the 1990 season. But the team can go a long way toward establishing a level of hope this Monday night.

All of the franchise’s demons of recent years will be staring them directly in the face on Monday night waiting to be exorcised or continuing to haunt them:

•The inability to win in prime time.

•The inability of quarterback Andy Dalton to perform well in prime time.

•The inability this season to beat a playoff contender other than the Baltimore Ravens.

The Bengals have lost the last four regular-season games they played in prime time, including the two they played this season: at New England and at home to Cleveland. Both of those losses came by at least 21 points.

“I guess we’re afraid of the dark,” defensive end Wallace Gilberry said. “I can tell you this: we’re going to come out Monday and we’re going to put our best foot forward.”

That sounds good and the Bengals certainly could do that, but the same things were said by players prior to the New England and Cleveland games.

Players are getting tired of answering the questions about the prime-time problem, but safety George Iloka understands the question won’t go away by ignoring it.

“It’s annoying and it’s our job to make it un-annoying,” Iloka said. “If we lose this game the talk will come back again. If we want to silence the critics, so to say, we’ve got to put up or shut up. That’s how it goes. It might be annoying, but that’s on us.”

Dalton’s poor performance has been a big reason for the recent lack of prime-time success. He’s just 2-6 in regular-season prime-time games in his career and 0-3 in the playoffs with 14 interceptions and only eight touchdowns and a combined rating of 63.1 in those nine games.

He tried to turn the page on those performances when asked if there was something he could point to that has gone wrong for him.

“It’s not just one thing,” Dalton said. “Different things have gone on. It doesn’t matter what we’ve done in the past it’s what we’re going to do on Monday and that’s our focus. Regardless of what’s gone on, regardless of what’s been said, we’ve put ourselves in a really good position and we know what we’re playing for. We have a lot of confidence that we can go and play our best game on Monday.”

While Dalton hasn’t played well in prime-time, opposing quarterbacks have. In the last four prime-time games against the Bengals, Cleveland’s Brian Hoyer, New England’s Tom Brady, Pittsburgh’s Ben Roethlisberger and Miami’s Ryan Tannehill combined for a 96.7 rating with none of the four having worse than a 92.3. They threw just one interception combined.

“The other team’s quarterback has played better,” said Lewis. “We haven’t had any effect on the other team’s quarterback. We’ve turned the football over; we’ve given up plays in other parts of the game that have hurt us. That makes a huge difference. We haven’t made enough plays effectively on offense. We haven’t been very good on third down in some of those games and they make a big difference. If we could turn a thing we’d fix it, but you don’t turn a knob. You’ve got to go out and execute better and do it better.”

Outside of two wins over the Ravens, the Bengals don’t even have a single victory this season over a team that is currently over .500, and against teams that would be in the AFC playoffs if they started today they are just 2-3 with the three losses coming to New England, Indianapolis and Pittsburgh, each by at least 21 points.

Brady had a 110.8 quarterback rating, Andrew Luck a 105.7 and Roethlisberger a 118.5 in those three games.

Now comes one of the best quarterbacks of all time in Peyton Manning.

If Manning has a big game and they are drubbed by Denver, it would be hard to expect anything other than a first-round playoff defeat for a fourth straight season, if the Bengals even earn a berth.

Arguably the most significant win they ever had on a Monday night came in the 1990 season when they beat Cleveland 34-13 to take over first-place for good in the then AFC Central division.

Perhaps not coincidentally that’s the last season the Bengals won a playoff game.

A win on Monday night might won’t just exorcise some current demons, but it might just be the impetus and lead the way to end over two decades of playoff futility.