Richard Skinner

rskinner@nky.com

Many Bengals fans are far more interested in how this year's team finishes the season rather than relishing in its 3-0 start, but if past team history is any indicator the fast start may be a good sign of how this season could turn out.

This is the seventh time in franchise history that the Bengals have started a season 3-0 and four of the other six times the Bengals made the playoffs, including 1988 when they won the AFC Championship and lost in the Super Bowl and 1990 when they last won a playoff game.

The two times the Bengals didn't make the playoffs following a 3-0 start were in 1969 and 2006. The 1969 season was just the second year of the franchise and rookie quarterback Greg Cook tore his rotator cuff in the third game of the season. His career was never the same again. In 2006 the Bengals went 5-8 the rest of the way thanks to losing five games by six points or less (three of which were by two points or less and another came in overtime).

From a point differential standpoint this has been the second-most impressive 3-0 start in team history. This year's team outscored its first three opponents (Baltimore, Atlanta and Tennessee) by a combined 47 points, and keep in mind those three teams are a combined 5-1 against the rest of the NFL. The 2005 team outscored its first three opponents by 60 points on the way to earning the franchise's first playoff berth since 1990.

Here is the point differential for the other six 3-0 starts:

1969 – 25 points

1975 – 30 points

1988 – 16 points

1990 – 44 points

2006 – 38 points

The Bengals have also forged their start this season without one of their key offensive weapons – wide receiver Marvin Jones, who missed the first three games with a broken foot after catching 51 passes for 712 yards and 10 touchdowns last season. They also have been without tight end Tyler Eifert since the first quarter of the season opener in Baltimore, wide receiver A.J. Green played only the first series of the Atlanta game and linebacker Vontaze Burfict played only the first half of the opener and barely into the second of the Atlanta game and then not at all against Tennessee due to concussions.

Jones is expected to return for the first game after the bye at New England on Oct. 5 and Burfict will likely return for that game, too. Eifert is scheduled to return for the Nov. 6 game against Cleveland.

Defensive tackle Geno Atkins is also slowly working his way back from knee surgery after he tore his ACL in the ninth game of last season and should continue to get better as the season progresses.

Head coach Marvin Lewis also said this week that there is plenty of room for improvement, too.

"We need to play better in all three phases," Lewis said. "Defensively, we need to make sure we get in the right fits better and we need to make sure we tackle better. That's key going forward. We've got a good chance to look at those things. In the running game, same thing on offense, we just need to keep taking those positive steps forward."

The schedule certainly gets tougher with the road game at New England, a game at Indianapolis on Oct. 19 and a seven-game stretch to end the season that features road games at New Orleans, Houston, Tampa Bay and division rivals Cleveland and Pittsburgh. The only two home games in that final stretch are against defending AFC Champion Denver and Pittsburgh.

The 3-0 start provides a little cushion for that portion of the schedule, and because they are the only undefeated team left in the AFC it also gives the Bengals a jump at landing one of the top two playoff spots and earn a bye into the divisional round for the first time since 1988. That's certainly one way to avoid a first-round loss for the fourth straight season.

"It's to put yourself in position to be in the mix when it counts," Lewis said of the start. "We're going to go into October the next time we play. We've had a good start to the season, now we have to have a better October than we had September."

The only thing that matters this season is what kind of January the Bengals have, but from what they've done so far this team might just be ready to get over that hump.