15 of their 17 regular-season games<\/a>, playoffs are the minimum expectation. And quarterback Joe Burrow proved, both in 2021 and 2022, that when he gets to the postseason he unlocks an even higher level of performance.<\/p>\n\u201cYou need a quarterback first and foremost, and weapons on offense,\u201d Cook said. \u201cWe\u2019ve found some pieces on defense and changed the mentality going into the offseason. They\u2019ve put up a lot of points. I know if we can stop them, it can turn into a blowout really quickly.\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s more than that. A team needs to find a way to work together. To support each other. To know each other.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m listening to the guys, trying to understand where they\u2019re coming from and how they move,\u201d Cook said. \u201cHow can I reach this person if need be. Reading and seeing that person. You never know what somebody is going through no matter what day it is. Just being somebody to lean on these guys.\u201d<\/p>\n
The goal is clear, for Cook, Burrow, and the Bengals.<\/p>\n
\u201cNow it\u2019s just trying to get over this hump so you can say you did something that\u2019s never been done in franchise history,\u201d Cook said.<\/p>\n
The Bengals have been to the Super Bowl three times. The next step is to get there and win it. There\u2019s an urgency to do it sooner rather than later, especially since the recent struggles have raised a fair question as to whether Burrow will start exploring his options elsewhere, if the Bengals can\u2019t get him where he wants to go.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Bengals are trying to end a streak of three years without a playoff berth. To get there,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":660665,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[63],"tags":[349,99],"class_list":["post-660664","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nfl","tag-nfl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/660664","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=660664"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/660664\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/660665"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=660664"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=660664"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=660664"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}