The Cincinnati Bengals and Los Angeles Rams punched their tickets for Super Bowl LVI with yesterday's victories. This unlikely matchup should give hope to many franchises, including the Dallas Cowboys, that the NFL's championship game is never too far out of reach.
For the Bengals, this Super Bowl appearance ends one of the league's longest droughts. Cincinnati has never won the big game and only appeared twice, with the last time coming in 1988.
While the Rams were in the Super Bowl just three years, Matthew Stafford was still a Detroit Lion at the time. Before this year, Stafford had a woeful 0-3 record in his rare playoff appearances since being the first overall pick of the 2009 Draft. He was a go-to reference for respected quarterbacks with a poor postseason resume.
The Cowboys are currently saddled with both of these narratives. Dallas hasn't appeared in a Super Bowl in 26 years; already one of the NFL's longer futility streaks now made even worse by the Bengals leaving the club. They also have a QB in Dak Prescott with only a 1-3 record so far in his career playoff games.
For the last 15 years, Dallas has flirted with the NFC Championship Game but never been able to seal the deal. With both Prescott and Tony Romo at the helm before him, the Cowboys have built contending teams that have all experienced seemingly untimely playoff exits.
This most recent failure in 2021 didn't feel like the Dez Bryant catch controversy in 2014, nor a case of a great team simply meeting a greater one like in 2016. Instead, Dallas appears to have been exposed a postseason pretender that made the tournament thanks to the weak NFC East and some other soft spots in the schedule.
But still, the Bengals and Rams weren't exactly lighting the world on fire last year. Cincy has been a mess for years now and have seemingly turned it around thanks to Joe Burrow and other rebuilding efforts. They hadn't even made the playoffs since 2015 before this season.
The Rams were 10-6 last year and lost in the second round, getting blown out 32-18 by the Green Bay Packers. They went 9-7 before that and didn't make the tournament.
Dumping Jared Goff for Matthew Stafford, plus a few other upgrades, appears have given Los Angeles what it needed to get over the hump. But based on his 11 seasons in Detroit, Stafford had been written off by many as a championship-level quarterback.
The key takeaway here is that history doesn't really matter. The Bengals have made a dramatic turnaround from the NFL's basement to playing in February. The Rams hitched their wagon to a 33-year-old quarterback with an 0-3 playoff record and will now be hosting the Super Bowl in two weeks.
If these franchises can do it, so can your Dallas Cowboys. We're all disappointed with how 2021 ended and all that's transpired since the glory days of the 90s. But longstanding futility and previous playoff results by your starting QB are only historical data; each year is another opportunity to either change the narrative or write the next chapter.
Hopefully, like the Bengals and Matthew Stafford just did, the Cowboys and Dak Prescott will change their stories in 2022.
