Bengals legend Ken Anderson sees parallels in 1981, 2021 teams

While the new generation of Cincinnati Bengals has taken the league by storm, older fans will tell you this team gives them a case of deja vu.

It goes without saying that the 2021-22 season has been a special one for the Cincinnati Bengals. After seeing young star quarterback Joe Burrow go down with a torn ACL in 2020, few believed that the Bengals would be playoff contenders, much less AFC North division champions.

As it turns out, though, Cincinnati has ridden the right arm of Burrow and the hands of Ja’Marr Chase further than they have been in over three decades. The young quarterback and wide receiver led the Bengals to their first playoff win since 1990 with a Wild Card win over the Las Vegas Raiders. The next week, they went on the road and defeated the Tennessee Titans and will be appearing in their first AFC Championship Game since the 1988-89 season.

This incredible magic carpet ride that Cincinnati is on has one Bengals legend reminiscing about another deep playoff run- the first in the history of the franchise that took place exactly 40 years ago. Ken Anderson was the quarterback of the Bengals that season, winning both NFL MVP and Comeback Player of the Year honors en route to leading Cincinnati to an appearance in Super Bowl XVI.

Ken Anderson sees the similarities between this Bengals team and the team he took to the Super Bowl

“There are a lot of similarities between this year’s team and the team I was on all those years ago,” Anderson said. “You look at how the team I was on had played the year before, it wasn’t great. We had gone 6-10 in 1980, and I had gotten injured. What happened with today’s team? Joe Burrow was injured last season, the team played poorly, and now they are in contention for a Super Bowl.”

Anderson said that both head coaches from each era deserve a ton of credit for the quick turnarounds.

“We went into training camp that ‘81 season, and by the third practice, Forrest Gregg had us running Oklahoma drills,” Anderson said. “Throughout the season, we’d focus on short-yardage situations on Friday. Aside from trying to go out and physically hurt your teammates, we had full contact in those practices. He put us through the wringer in a time where that wasn’t uncommon, but it brought us closer together and made us stronger as a unit.”

Similar to the team of 40 years ago, the modern-day Bengals saw a similar turnaround under third-year head coach, Zac Taylor.

“Everyone talks about how well Joe Burrow has played, and how great Ja’Marr Chase is, and they deserve a ton of praise, but so does Zac Taylor,” Anderson said. “He has created a culture there that is unlike anything I’ve ever seen within the team, and that speaks to the patience and connection he has with those players, but it also says a lot about Mike Brown for allowing him the time to create that culture within the team.”

Both Anderson’s team and Burrow’s team started off the season with wins, but it wasn’t as pretty for the 1981 NFL MVP as it was for the current signal-caller in Cincinnati.

“We started the season against the Seahawks, and I threw three interceptions in the first quarter and got benched,” Anderson recalled with a laugh. “My backup was Turk Schonert. Luckily he came in and played pretty well and we won. “Somehow, I talked myself into starting the next week against the Jets, and we started rolling from there.”

Both the 1981 and 2021 Bengals started off 5-3 through their first eight games. Burrow was blossoming into a future superstar, Anderson was having the best year of his career at age 32, and both teams hit their strides late in the season.

“When we hit November, we had five games against playoff-contending teams, and we blew them all out,” Anderson said. “I think that was when you could kind of tell that things were catching on a little bit for us as a team.”

From Week 9-13, Anderson and the Bengals went on a tear. They defeated the Houston Oilers 34-21 before traveling to San Diego in Week 10 to face the Chargers. Anderson threw for 288 yards and two touchdowns and the defense had two interceptions as the Bengals handily beat the Chargers 40-17 in the first of two matchups those teams would go on to have. Cincinnati would go on to defeat the Los Angeles Rams, Denver Broncos, and Cleveland Browns to round out the month of November, scoring 38 and 41 points, respectively, in the latter two games.

“That whole month gave us confidence, but that Denver game was when we really felt like we could win it all,” Anderson said. “Denver had a really good defense that season, and I threw for almost 400 yards and we thumped them pretty good. Leaving Denver, and then coming home to beat Cleveland and put up a bunch of points in that game, as well, gave us confidence that really showed up and carried us through the rest of the season.”

Much like the 1981 Bengals found a groove in the latter stages of the season, so too did the 2021 Bengals. Burrow and co. got hot at the tail end of the regular season. They blew out division-rival Pittsburgh 41-10 in late November and finished the season off with huge wins over Baltimore and Kansas City to clinch their first AFC North title since 2015. The second-year quarterback out of LSU threw for over 400 yards in each game, including a 525-yard performance against the Ravens.

“Obviously, the wins against the Ravens and Chiefs were incredible, but the beatdown they gave Pittsburgh reminded me of that 1981 season,” Anderson said. “For the better part of the last 20 years, the Steelers have had the Bengals’ number the same way that Terry Bradshaw and those great defenses had ours throughout the ‘70s. It was special for us to do it back then because the road to the Super Bowl always went through Pittsburgh. A lot of that can be said about this current Steelers team, as well, with all the success they have had over the last 20 years, and I was lucky enough to be part of it for a while as the quarterbacks’ coach. So to see this year’s team beat Pittsburgh twice, in a lot of ways, mirrored what we did in the 1981 season.”

The win over Pittsburgh, followed by a win in Atlanta clinched home-field advantage for Anderson and the Bengals and set up the first home playoff game in franchise history.

“We had only made it to the playoffs two other times in my time there,” Anderson said. “In 1973, we played the Dolphins in Miami, and they had an amazing team that ended up winning the Super Bowl that season. In 1975, we played the Raiders in Oakland, and it came down to the final drive. We were driving at the end of the game, and I was getting ready to throw to Chip Myers on fourth down before Ted Hendricks sacked me, and that ended the game. So those were disappointing, and we were excited to finally host a playoff game.”

The Bengals hosted the Buffalo Bills in the Divisional round and hopped out to an early 14-0 lead in the first quarter. Buffalo with two Joe Cribbs rushing touchdowns, including a 44-yard score to tie the game in the third quarter. Cincinnati reclaimed the lead later in the third with a Charles Alexander 20 yard run before the Bills tied it back up with a Jerry Butler touchdown reception from Joe Ferguson.

Anderson hit Cris Collinsworth for a 16-yard touchdown, which would end up being the game-winning score. The Bengals forced Buffalo to turn the ball over on downs to end the game and advance, winning their first playoff game in team history.

“We really believed that if we just went in and played our style of football that we would win,” Anderson said. “We looked around and saw all the faces painted black and orange and you could just feel that this wasn’t just another game. That gave us a lot of confidence and we were able to squeak out a win and welcome San Diego into town the next week.

The Chargers were coming off one of the most infamous games in NFL history, defeating the Miami Dolphins 41-38 in what we now know as “The Epic in Miami” the week prior. As the week went on, the temperatures kept dropping as a cold front swept through the midwest.

“It was cold throughout the week, and it was pretty bitter when we practiced at the stadium that Saturday,” Anderson said. “I always woke up early at the hotel on game day to get a cup of coffee and read the paper, and I stuck my head outside and I just remember thinking ‘Oh my God what happened overnight?’ It was sunny, but it was cold as hell.”

Factoring in the 20-30 mile per hour wind gusts, the temperature at kickoff was -59 degrees, making it the coldest game in NFL history and rightfully earning the moniker of “The Freezer Bowl.”

“We had guys in the locker room trying to figure out what to wear because no one had ever played in anything like that,” Anderson recalled. “We didn’t have hand warmers in those days, and the gloves weren’t doing the trick so there were a couple guys who took their leather gloves that they wore to the stadium and they threw some tape over them because it kept their hands warmer than the other gloves did.”

In the arctic-like conditions, the Bengals won the coin toss but opted to not receive the ball, meaning they would kickoff to begin both halves.

“We decided to take the wind,” Anderson said. If you notice, the first time that the Chargers had the ball, Dan Fouts threw to his left toward their bench and the ball just fluttered and died in the wind, so that decision to kick really paid off.”

The Bengals turned that advantage into 10 first-quarter points, including an eight-yard touchdown pass from Anderson to M.L. Harris. San Diego answered with a 33-yard touchdown pass from Fouts to Kellen Winslow, but that would turn out to be the Chargers’ only points of the game. Cincinnati marched down the field and scored on a Pete Johnson run from the one yard-line to take a 17-7 lead into halftime.

“I give a lot of credit to our great offensive coordinator, Lindy Infante,” Anderson said. “After seeing what wasn’t working for the Chargers, we adjusted our gameplan based on that. We saw the swing passes to the outside weren’t working, so Lindy figured that we could find success in the passing game if we solely attacked the middle of the field. If you look back, most, if not all of my completions, were toward the middle part of the field. So he deserves credit for recognizing that so quickly and helping our offense adjust to the adverse conditions.”

The Bengals defense also put a great performance on display, intercepting two of Fouts’ passes and forcing four fumbles throughout the game. Anderson finished the day with 161 passing yards, two touchdowns, and a passer rating of 115.9, but the four-time Pro Bowler admitted that it almost didn’t happen.

“It was the first time we had heated benches for a game,” Anderson said. “It was the first quarter and I was sitting on the bench with my helmet on. Someone came and threw a big trench coat over me, and the bench had slots to put your feet in. So, I put my feet in the slots and sat on my hands to keep them as warm as I could. Then, there was a loud roar from the crowd and I stood up to see if it was a turnover, and my feet didn’t come out and I fell. The first thing that it the ground was my facemask, and I was seeing stars. I called the trainer over and told him to get me some smelling salts because I couldn’t knock myself out of the damn AFC Championship Game because I fell off a bench. Luckily, this was before they had a ton of cameras watching everything. If that happened today, everybody would be tweeting about it and I would have probably gone into concussion protocol and wouldn’t have been able to play. But, luckily it worked out.”

It did work out, and the Bengals won the game 27-7 to advance to their first Super Bowl.

“We played a clean game,” Anderson said. “We didn’t have a lot of penalties, and the only turnover we had was when Danny Ross fumbled late in the game when it was irrelevant. Forrest told us before the game ‘Today is going to be like going to the dentist- you know it’s going to hurt, but you have to go anyway.’ He did a good job of getting us mentally prepared.”

The Bengals would end up facing the San Francisco 49ers in Super Bowl XVI- a team who was led by former Bengals offensive coordinator Bill Walsh and a young, plucky quarterback named Joe Montana.

“No one expected us to be there, but no one expected the 49ers to be there, either,” Anderson said. “We were both 6-10 the year before, so not many people thought either team would make it all the way. Bill and I had remained friends throughout that time, and we would see each other every day at the Pontiac Silverdome because they would be leaving practice as we showed up for our practice. We knew each other well from our time together, and I think that helped with how he got them prepared for the game.”

While the Bengals had their best season in franchise history, they came up short in the final game of the season, falling to the 49ers. 26-21.

“Obviously, it wasn’t the result that we wanted,” Anderson said. Anytime you turn the ball over five times, I don’t care how good you are, you aren’t going to win. But you know what? Even though we didn’t win, that season set the stage for the next decade or so. It was the first wave of excitement the city had really had since the team was formed, and that carried on through the years.”

From Akili Smith to Carson Palmer to Andy Dalton, Bengals fans have had several exciting regular seasons end abruptly on Wildcard weekend, as well as miserable seasons where they were left begging for it to stop. Through all of the hurt and heartache, though, they seemed to have reached the light at the end of the tunnel.

“There was moderate excitement and success when Carson Palmer and Chad Johnson were together, but this is bigger than that,” Anderson said. “You can see all the pieces coming together. Taking Burrow No. 1 overall and seeing his potential, as well as his demeanor- that gives the franchise confidence. You saw the attitude of the team after they won the first playoff game against the Raiders. They expected to win, and knew the job wasn’t done.”

The parallels to Bengals teams of yesteryear are evident. While it is unknown at the time of writing if the Bengals will play in Super Bowl LVI, one thing is very clear- this is not a one-time thing.

This quarterback is going to be a star in tiger stripes for years to come. His favorite receiver is already one of the best in the league. This defense is full of young, up-and-coming stars at every level. This kicker is as clutch as they come. Together, they collectively have veins colder than that day at Riverfront Stadium in January 1982.

These are not your father’s Cincinnati Bengals. While they currently rule the jungle, they seem poised to soon rule the entire NFL.