The Bengals had to sweat out a late rally by the Raiders but still advanced to the Divisional round after a solid performance to beat Las Vegas.
But now a road playoff game awaits the club, as Cincinnati will play Tennessee on Saturday. The Bengals have never won a road playoff game in their team history, going 0-7 in those contests.
According to running back Joe Mixon, the 2021 Bengals aren’t concerned about the ghosts of postseasons past.
“We’re here to win. We don’t care about some theory that everybody [else is] worried about,” Mixon said this week, via Jake Rice of the team’s website. “We know what we’ve got in front of us, we know what we have to do in order to get where we want to be, we got the path laid out for us. At the same time, as we’ve been saying for these past I don’t know how many weeks now, we control our own destiny and we just got to keep on pushing and keep on getting better each and every week.”
Mixon noted that Cincinnati has played well on the road, compiling a 5-3 record away from Paul Brown Stadium this season. One of those losses came in Week 18 when the Bengals rested quarterback Joe Burrow and several other starters against the Browns.
“We try to pride ourselves on going out there and being real warriors, to be honest,” Mixon said. “We’ve been doing really well on the road against very good teams. We like to go out there (and handle) business and do whatever we can to always come out on top. We pretty much get prepared throughout the week, pretty much go ahead and do that.”
And while the Bengals have put together solid performances, Mixon noted that the club still has to hone in on the details to defeat a No. 1 seed on the road.
“We’ve got to figure out, ways to play complete games. We have yet to do that,” Mixon said. “We’re definitely getting better, on each side of the ball and also on special teams. I [feel] like we’ve yet to play our best football.
“And I think that within these next couple opportunities that we are able to have, I think that we’re going to put it all together here shortly.”
If they don’t do it against the Titans, then the Bengals won’t be playing beyond this weekend.