Playoff Psychology: Do Bengals battle mental hurdle?

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NOVEMBER 7, 1988: Steelers quarterback Bubby BristerQuarterback Akili Smith (11) is joined by (from left)Bengal Corey Dillon goes in for the only Bengals scoreCarson Palmer hurt his knee on the Bengals' secondCarson Palmer goes down with a knee injury on a hitCincinnati Bengals kicker Neil Rackers tries to jumpSEPTEMBER 19, 1988: Bengals defenders dive for theDECEMBER 11, 1977: Archie Griffin carries for a 14-yardSEPTEMBER 17, 1989: Ickey Woods, #30, flips over whileSEPTEMBER 17, 1989: Cincinnati Bengals wide recieverQuarterback Akili Smith is sacked in the fourth quarterSEPTEMBER 17, 1989: James Brooks, #21, eludes Steelers'SEPTEMBER 17, 1989: James Brooks, #21, during the Bengals/SteelersOCTOBER 1986: Cincinnati Bengals quarterback BoomerPittsburgh Steelers quarterback Ben RoethlisbergerBengals defensive end Wallace Gilberry (left) and defensivePittsburgh Steelers quarterback Ben RoethlisbergerPittsburgh Steelers quarterback Ben RoethlisbergerWallace Gilberry (95), rear, and Carlos Dunlap (96),Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Ben RoethlisbergerSteelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger (7) launchesCincinnati Bengals defensive end Carlos Dunlap (96)Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger rolls out duringAll eyes will be on Pittsburgh free safety Mike MitchellOfficials try to break up Steelers guard Ramon FosterBengals QB Andy Dalton returns to the field with castCincinnati Bengals tight end Tyler Eifert (85) stretchesCincinnati Bengals cornerback Dre Kirkpatrick (27)Cincinnati Bengals middle linebacker Rey Maualuga (58)The Pittsburgh Steelers were able to convert on manyThe Steelers' DeAngelo Williams yells after he madeCincinnati Bengals running back Giovani Bernard (25)Cincinnati Bengals wide receiver Marvin Jones (82)Cincinnati Bengals quarterback AJ McCarron (5) andPittsburgh Steelers running back DeAngelo WilliamsPittsburgh Steelers guard David DeCastro (66) gripsCincinnati Bengals wide receiver Marvin Jones (82)Cincinnati Bengals middle linebacker Rey Maualuga (58)Cincinnati Bengals defensive end Carlos Dunlap (96)Cincinnati Bengals defensive end Carlos Dunlap (96)Cincinnati Bengals defensive end Carlos Dunlap (96)Cincinnati Bengals defensive end Carlos Dunlap (96)Cincinnati Bengals wide receiver Marvin Jones (82)Cincinnati Bengals wide receiver A.J. Green (18) leapsCincinnati Bengals quarterback Andy Dalton (14) tacklesCincinnati Bengals defensive tackle Geno Atkins (97)Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Ben RoethlisbergerCincinnati Bengals defensive end Wallace Gilberry (95)Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Ben RoethlisbergerCincinnati Bengals defensive tackle Geno Atkins (97)Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger

  • Cincinnati Bengals wide receiver A.J. Green (18) leaps

Four years. Four losses.

Same round. Same results.

Saturday night, the Bengals return to the Wild-Card Round of the NFL Playoffs for a fifth shot in five years at erasing the lone dark cloud hovering over one of the league’s brightest franchises.

All other elements of the best organizations in football contain a check mark in the box.

Yet, when the Bengals are discussed locally and nationally, the asterisk swells larger than any checks: They can’t win in the playoffs.

“Everybody knows what’s at stake,” special teams coordinator Darrin Simmons said. “There’s nothing that needs to be overemphasized.”

The last postseason win came 25 years ago on Jan. 6, 1991. But Saturday night won’t be about 25 years and the longest current playoff victory drought in the league. When 18 of the 22 projected starters for the Bengals have experienced at least three playoff losses, Saturday against the Steelers will be about a nucleus attempting to break through its ceiling.

The question of the year inside the offices at 1 Paul Brown Stadium: How do you do that?

In the end, the Bengals shed this cross by making fewer mistakes than the Steelers, their star players making incredible plays and withstanding the range of emotions associated with a game of this magnitude. Still, both teams will battle these factors.

Do the Bengals face one more, though? Will the Bengals as much battle the Steelers as ghosts of Januarys past?

The memory of Houston, San Diego and Indianapolis can’t be completely forgotten.

The Bengals to a man say the past holds zero effect on the present. This team is different. This year is different. Every game is different.

“I don’t think there is a guy in this locker room concerned with the last four years or how it went the last time we played these guys,” left tackle Andrew Whitworth said. “I think we see it as there is 12 teams in this thing and we want to be the last one standing.”

Maintaining granular focus on this game and the details of beating Pittsburgh weren’t difficult during the week. Outside of throngs of media peppering everyone with questions about lack of playoff success, the week went by just as any other during this season of 12 wins and four losses.

But what about when the second half arrives, Pittsburgh rides a wave of momentum and adversity strikes the Bengals' sideline? How prevalent will the memory of being outscored 57-6 in the second halves of the playoff games be in the back of their minds? How will the team react in a game where the highs spike higher and lows plummet lower than the regular season?

Then the true test of the mental ability to close out the past will arrive.

“Going into the game, it’s obviously more intense as a playoff game, but I’ve felt the same, really,” safety George Iloka said. “If you are down in the third quarter, then it might start to hit you. You might start pressing, like, ‘Here we go again.’ But initially going into the game we go into the game confident. That’s it. We don’t think about the years before.”

How can an elite athlete arrive at the same spot he failed at time and time again and not think about the reality that’s haunted these players and this franchise for years?

Nobody can crawl into the competitive brains of these players, but they can look through the lens of history and science. Those two suggest the mental battle to be very real.

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Bengals beat writers Paul Dehner Jr. and Jim Owczarski break down the day's news from Paul Brown Stadium.
The Enquirer/Sam Greene

‘THAT’S WHAT HAPPENED IN BUFFALO’

Few know better than the Buffalo Bills about inability to overcome a final obstacle. They lost four consecutive Super Bowls from 1991-94. The wide right field-goal attempt by Scott Norwood in a 20-19 loss to the Giants in their first Super Bowl loss shifted into blowout defeats against the Redskins and in back-to-back years versus Dallas. The mental challenge to avoid the here-we-go-again moment proved too much.

Former Bills and Packers receiver Don Beebe experienced both ends of the mental spectrum. He specifically recalls his Bills team leading, 13-6, at half in their fourth Super Bowl, but once the Cowboys ripped off a fumble return for a TD and added an Emmitt Smith score, the Bills beat themselves.

“You go to the sideline and I gotta tell you, you woulda thought we were down 30,” Beebe said. “Nobody was saying nothing, it was a deer-in-the-headlight look. And it was like, here we go again.”

In winning Super Bowl XXXI with Green Bay two years later, he saw the drastic mental difference firsthand.

“We go up 10-0 early and next thing you know Drew Bledsoe, boom-boom, we’re down 14-10. I think it was early in the second quarter. I believe at that time Buffalo woulda started thinking oh, God, here they go,” Beebe said. “Next thing you know it’s 27-14 going into the half, us. And that was the difference in the few games.”

Former Bengals safety Chris Crocker, who experienced the first three in the string of four consecutive losses, recalls dealing with the topic as a conversation during the week and immediately after the game. The only time the history of playoff failure wasn’t a topic was during the three-plus hours of the game.

“It was something the media and everybody kept talking about,” he said. “It was something you just constantly heard all week leading up to the game about how they are going to lose in the first round again. It’s not really a distraction, but it’s something you deal with.”

The key is for everyone to keep their heads centered 100 percent in the game at hand. That’s not always the case. Beebe says this primarily falls back on the player leadership to keep from negativity creeping in, starting with the quarterback and filtering down.

“In knowing that situation, what (the Bengals) really need to focus on now is that, hey, somebody’s going to make a mistake in this game,” he said. “It’s going to happen. We’re going to turn it over, you miss a tackle, or whatever it is, get over it very quickly, OK? Get over it very quickly and let’s move on. Because what’s going to happen is if the first mistake happens then all of a sudden they’ll start freaking out.

“That’s exactly what happened in Buffalo.”

Pressure extends beyond players and up the franchise structure to a head coach in danger of reaching a dubious milestone. Marvin Lewis is currently tied with Jim Mora (New Orleans, Indianapolis) as the losingest coach in playoff history at 0-6.

The Bengals' coach swatted any consideration that past playoff failures hold relevance here or that this is a personal concern. Avoiding 0-7 wouldn’t mean any monkey lifted off his back.

“One and six,” Lewis said, when asked what a win would mean to him.

Mora can relate to answering the same questions, and no matter how many times the statistics can be downplayed, there’s no hiding from the truth, he says.

“You can say you don’t care what people think but that’s baloney, you do,” Mora said to the Associated Press. Mora lost his first playoff game in three consecutive seasons in New Orleans from 1990-92. “It is something that you don’t want to be branded with. I thought at some point that maybe I would have won one. You still welcome getting into the playoffs but there was that little sense of dread answering the same questions about if this was the year that I would win one. I didn’t worry about it at the time as much as not concentrating on what was in the back of my mind.”

The back of the mind can be a dangerous place.

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF ADVERSITY

Dr. Chris Carr serves as the Coordinator for Sport and Performance Psychology at St. Vincent Sports Performance in Indianapolis. He’s held the role since 2006 and spent more than 25 years in the field of sports psychology. Over the course of his career, Carr worked with NFL, NBA, MLB, Division I college and Olympic athletes at the mental aspect of reaching peak performance.

He says his field is often misperceived as “snake oil,” but the process of training mentally for these situations not only is necessary, but often the difference between winning and losing.

The problem becomes the thought that a player or team can overcome a mental obstacle without addressing it. Just as with a physical injury, working through a mental hurdle must be trained. It’s not something one motivational speech can instantly fix.

“Imagine going by an athlete and say you have to get stronger and pointing to the weight room and not giving them a specific plan,” Carr said. “That’s what we do a lot with the mental side of sport. You say you have to let go of it. You have to move on. How do we do that? For that level athlete they have to be self aware and learn how to do that.”

Dr. Scott Goldman, Clinical and High Performance Psychologist at the University of Michigan, oversees 31 sports and over 1,000 athletes. He cites the work of Dr. Hap Davis, who found connections between a change in brain function when confronted with previous failure.

“He looked at athletes while watching videos of themselves failing to qualify for the Olympics,” Goldman said. “In his work he talked about how there were similarities to PTSD, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. The trauma was not life-threatening but significant. A guy who misses an important jump shot might have an emotional or visceral response to entering that stadium again because he’ll recall that painful experience.”

Carr and Goldman agree that focusing on the specific process of the event and turning what would be a threat into an enjoyable challenge stand among the most important elements of not allowing the past to creep into the present.

In their own way, both elements have been at the centerpiece of the Bengals' approach this week. All talk from players and coaches surrounds focusing on the specifics of this game - with zero thought to any prior events.

“Certainly, there is (a psychology),” Simmons said. “This is Week 17. This is Game 17 for us of the season. Focus on one game. That’s our whole focus. It’s no different than it has been for 16 weeks. We are not good enough to look ahead and we certainly aren’t going to look behind.”

Cincinnati Bengals quarterback Andy Dalton (14) walksCincinnati Bengals quarterback AJ McCarron (5) andCincinnati Bengals cornerback Dre Kirkpatrick (27)Cincinnati Bengals cornerback Dre Kirkpatrick (27)A Pittsburgh Steelers fan is arrested in the fourthA group of Bengals fans are upset by the 33-20 scorelineBengals quarterback AJ McCarron talks with tackle AndrewBengals fan Sharon Tinch of Springboro can barely watchCincinnati Bengals wide receiver Marvin Jones (82)Bengals fan Mae Mae Stiverson of Wilmington watchesCincinnati Bengals quarterback Andy Dalton (14) talksCincinnati Bengals quarterback AJ McCarron (5) dropsBengals QB Andy Dalton returns to the field with aSteelers fans cheer as the Steelers beat the BengalsCincinnati Bengals cornerback Josh Shaw (26) puts pressureOfficials try to break up Steelers guard Ramon FosterCincinnati Bengals strong safety Leon Hall (29), right,Cincinnati Bengals tight end Tyler Eifert (85) is broughtPittsburgh Steelers cornerback Antwon Blake (41) andPittsburgh Steelers cornerback Antwon Blake (41) andThe Ben-Gals cheerleaders take the field in a specialPittsburgh Steelers cornerback Antwon Blake (41) knocksCincinnati Bengals tight end Tyler Eifert (85) stretchesFrom left: Cincinnati Bengals outside linebacker VontazeCincinnati Bengals wide receiver Marvin Jones (82)A pair of F-16 fighter jets from the 180th FighterPittsburgh Steelers running back DeAngelo WilliamsPittsburgh Steelers quarterback Ben RoethlisbergerCincinnati Bengals tight end Tyler Eifert (85) stretchesCincinnati Bengals quarterback Andy Dalton (14) tacklesCincinnati Bengals kicker Mike Nugent (2) watches asBengals quarterback AJ McCarron (5) celebrates withCincinnati Bengals cornerback Dre Kirkpatrick (27)Cincinnati Bengals running back Giovani Bernard (25)Cincinnati Bengals wide receiver A.J. Green (18) leapsCincinnati Bengals wide receiver Marvin Jones (82)Cincinnati Bengals wide receiver A.J. Green (18) isCincinnati Bengals defensive end Carlos Dunlap (96)Cincinnati Bengals defensive end Carlos Dunlap (96)Cincinnati Bengals defensive end Carlos Dunlap (96)Cincinnati Bengals middle linebacker Rey Maualuga (58)Cincinnati Bengals wide receiver Marvin Jones (82)Pittsburgh Steelers strong safety Robert Golden (21)Pittsburgh Steelers guard David DeCastro (66) gripsSide judge Joe Larrew (73) announces a defensive penaltyPittsburgh Steelers running back DeAngelo WilliamsBengals defensive line coach Jay Hayes shouts a goalCincinnati Bengals head coach Marvin Lewis talks withCincinnati Bengals head coach Marvin Lewis talks downBen-Gals cheerleader April shakes her hair as she cheersBen-Gals cheerleader Tina wears a Hawaiian Lei afterCincinnati Bengals running back Rex Burkhead (33) catchesCincinnati Bengals tight end Tyler Kroft (81) makesThe Steelers' DeAngelo Williams yells after he madeCincinnati Bengals cornerback Josh Shaw (26), left,Cincinnati Bengals cornerback Adam Jones (24) is inactive

  • Cincinnati Bengals wide receiver A.J. Green (18) leaps
  • Cincinnati Bengals wide receiver A.J. Green (18) is

Dre Kirkpatrick admitted he took the wrong mindset of anger into the last Pittsburgh game and feels a specific change in attitude will help alter this result.

It also falls in line with the keys Carr and Goldman stress about having fun and enjoying the challenge.

“That’s all I’m thinking about,” Kirkpatrick said. “Not many players get to play in the playoffs. You got to cherish the moment. It’s all about living in this moment not what they have done in previous years or how they beat us during the season. It’s all about hitting the restart button and going out there with a clear mind.”

A total of nine starters and 19 players from the 2011 team are on the 2015 roster. Fast forward one season and you add 10 more. So, more than half of the team experienced at least the last three losses.

Every projected starter on the Bengals' nickel defense has experienced at least three of these playoff losses. Seven offensive starters can say the same, and it would be eight if not for the injury to Andy Dalton.

That leads to another important element of any potential mental block. So much of the attitude and tone of the team reacting to adversity begins with the quarterback. Saturday, it will be AJ McCarron in his fourth career start. Yet, the fact he’s never played in any of the losses might actually play to the Bengals' advantage by erasing any negative recognition. Beebe knows firsthand that will make a difference.

“One hundred percent yes,” he said. “Absolutely. There is no scar tissue there. I saw it get worse with (Jim) Kelly as the Super Bowls went on.”

McCarron not only hasn’t played in a playoff loss, he owns three national championship rings from Alabama (2009, 2011, 2012) - which prove the big stage doesn’t phase him. Prior to his arrival, Alabama scuffled through nearly two decades without a championship for the storied program. He can’t help but observe the correlation.

“The way that it’s talked about here is so much of a negative,” McCarron said. “It reminds me of Alabama, of living in the past and how many national championships we had as a university. How many losses we had in the postseason. It’s a different team every year. And it’s hard to get to the playoffs, period, in this league. It’s extremely hard to win a game. There’s not a reason to live in the past. I don’t think this team does that by any means. Last year was last year. Just living in the present moment. We have a healthy life. We have great teammates. Let’s go have fun in the game we grew up playing and see what happens.”

The here-we-go-again thoughts may or may not exist as Saturday night plays out. Lewis adamantly denies them.

“Players don’t go into that,” Lewis said. “I think other people do. We don’t have enough time for that. There’s not been a situation like that. Those are your words.”

Nobody can know for certain until the moment arrives. But if the Bengals were to finally take the next step over this hurdle, avoiding mental relapses will be part of the process as much as avoiding tackles.

This team believes it owns the right frame of mind to do both.

“The years before don’t really mean nothing,” Iloka said. “Whether we won the Super Bowl last year or didn’t, what’s it got to do with this year? It’s a whole other ballgame. I’m treating this as the 2016 playoffs, Bengals versus the Steelers. Let’s go.”

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