Paul Daugherty

pdaugherty@enquirer.com

Now that you’ve been Gaga-ed and bean-dipped within an inch of your life and you don’t have football to kick around for six months, it’s time for a drastic suggestion that very likely could haunt us both until the end of Tom Brady’s Methuselah-n career.

The Cincinnati Bengals have a decent chance to play in Super Fitty-Two next February in Minneapolis.

Sure, Doc. Stick to politics.

Doc: Stick to sports? It's getting harder to do

If The Men make Big Bowl No. 52, I will celebrate my genius forever and offer it worldwide, free of charge. If The Men don’t make it, I will deny everything and claim my prediction as an alternative truth.

Hear me out.

The NFL is an equal opportunity league for all but the most forlorn. Of its 32 teams, there are exactly six right now who have zero chance of participating next February: The Jaguars, Bears, Jets, 49ers and Rams. And the Browns, who have a gulag all their own in Karl Marx’s favorite league.

Almost any team can reach the Super Bowl. Not one national “expert’’ predicted in August that Atlanta would be in Super Bowl 51. Not one NFL.com-er thought the Falcons would even win the NFC South. Ditto CBS.com and Sports Illustrated’s online football wing, Monday Morning QB.

The best thing about Baseball is the worst thing about the NFL. A 162-game schedule comes with an integrity all its own. The Big 162 weeds out the worthless and weak. When you play games nearly every day for six months, the strong survive. When you play 16 games, the healthy survive. The lucky, the fluky and the deep survive. “Breaks’’ matter dearly in football. In baseball, they’re superficial, a paper cut on a six-month season.

As ESPN.com’s Bill Barnwell pointed out recently, the world champion Cubs had a 1-9 stretch last summer and still finished 103-59.

The 2002 Oakland Raiders survived. They made the Super Bowl and lost by 27, then didn’t return to the playoffs until this past season. The ’02 Raiders were led by Rich Gannon and Charlie Garner. The one and only Charlie Garner.

Oakland’s opponent that day, Tampa Bay, has made the playoffs twice since, both times as a wild card, and lost each.

In Atlanta’s only previous Super appearance, its quarterback was Chris Chandler, who played 18 years and only once started more than nine games in a year. Special mention to the ’94 San Diego Chargers, led by the legendary QB Stan Humphries, who somehow made it to the Big Bowl, where they lost a 55-10 cliffhanger to the Joe Montana 49ers.

Last year’s NFC champ Carolina won nine fewer games this year than last. Faced with this Himalayan mountain of evidence, how can you say the 2017 Cincinnati Bengals cannot play in February of 2018?

There are a few franchises you can set your watch to. The Swiss Timing Award goes to the Patriots, of course, with honorable mentions to Green Bay, Denver and the Steelers. After that? It’s any team’s game.

Equal opportunity also means lots of close games, when a break or a referee’s call or – calling Mike Nugent, Mr. Michael Nugent – a missed kick can bust a season. The 2016 Bengals were 1-5-1 in games decided by seven or fewer points. The ’15 team was 4-3.

The schedule matters. In the NFL, you rotate non-divisional foes. Who knew last spring that the Dallas Cowboys would be the second-best team on Cincinnati’s schedule? The Bengals played seven games versus playoff teams this year. The Falcons played four.

A first step to Super participation is winning your division. The Bengals have that edge. Why? Ben Roethlisberger is on the serious downside. This is based more on observation than numbers. Roethlisberger’s stats were better in ’16 than ’15. He threw eight more TD passes and had three fewer picks.

But when I watched Ben this year, I saw less of the improvised heroics that have defined his greatness. The pocket became more of a permanent home, not just the starting line for his excellent adventures.

Ben will be 35 next year. Unlike Brady and Drew Brees, he has expressed no desire to play until the Metamucil kicks in. His backup is lamentable Landry Jones. ’Nuf said.

And Joe Flacco is well on his way to irrelevance.

Meantime, Andy Dalton is in his prime. He’ll be 30 next October. Matt Ryan is 31. Each has struggled and overcome. Each has been seen as Good But Not Good Enough. Ryan is the reigning MVP. Dalton was in the 2015 MVP photo until he got hurt.

The Falcons’ judicious free-agent signings (Alex Mack, Mo Sanu) were huge wins. The Bengals have shown they can be equally creative: Terence Newman, Adam Jones, Chris Crocker and Dhani Jones.

Get your tickets now for Minneapolis. You heard it here first.