Lions vs. Bengals: Random Stats

This season is almost over. It feels like it was just yesterday when the season started. Anyhow, the Lions are in a position to make the playoffs, believe it or not. Whether they do or not is the real question. They’ll have to start off their quest to the postseason with a win over the Bengals. First, let’s talk about 8-6, shall we?

The Lions don’t have much history at 8-6. They’ve only had the record four times in franchise history. They finished with a winning record three of those times. Including the last time they were 8-6 way back in 2000. Now for some history.

It’s time to get in our totally rad phone booth time machine and have a bogus journey back to September 27, 1970. There wasn’t mountain high enough to keep Diana Ross from getting to you and Tora Tora Tora! was the number one movie in the world. The Lions welcomed the Cincinnati Bengals to town for the first and got 38-3 win over the relatively new franchise.

The Lions and Bengals have played each other 10 more times since that day and the Bengals have pretty much owned the Lions. The Lions are 3-8 all time against the Bengals. If they hope to make the playoffs, they’ll have to do something they haven’t done since November of 1992: Beat the Cincinnati Bengals.

To the social media stuff!

Weather stuff to start it off. I like it. As I mentioned, the two teams have only played 11 times, and five of those games were indoors. Of the remaining six games, the coldest one on record is the Lions’ most recent field trip to Cincinnati in 2009. The weather that day was a decent 32.2 degrees. Not bad.

By the way, the current forecast for Cincinnati on Sunday is 39 degrees with snow coming later on in the night. So the Lions shouldn't have to worry about an ice bowl or anything like that.

Jumping into the counting stuff now. The Lions have been around since 1930. In that time, the Lions have a record of 80-89-2 in the final two games of the season. Not too bad, but not so good either.

Ahh, we’re getting more cat teams involved now. Let’s figure it out. The Lions are 8-17 all time against other feline teams. The Bengals however, are much much better with a 19-17 record against cat teams. Did you think for a second that I was going to write worse? If you didn't, that’s fine. If you did, I totally got you.

There’s really no way to know this one, man. But I’ll guess. I don’t mind being reckless. I’m going to guess that each game had three timeouts per team and the coaches used every single one of them. So I’m gonna go with 66 timeouts for each team.

Finally the question on everyone’s mind. Can the Lions beat a man with red hair? Well, the Lions have only played against the Bengals with Andy Dalton under center once, and they lost. So let’s see how many red-headed quarterbacks I can find. I’ll be back in a second.

I found four that the Lions have played against. Andy Dalton, Carson Palmer, Sonny Jurgensen and Brandon Weeden. The Lions are 5-9 against those with the hair of red. Let’s hope they add another win this Saturday.