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Disregarding The Cincinnati Bengals West Coast Record

The Cincinnati Bengals head to the west coast and we're fairly certain that it's far enough away that a potential blackout won't affect those of us in Cincinnati.

Andy Lyons

Though we highly doubt Andre Smith will stand near the airport terminal signing Leaving on a Jet Plane (ala, Michael Clarke Duncan), the Cincinnati Bengals will head out to California this weekend; where they've historically struggled, especially during the Marvin Lewis era. If we include Denver and Arizona as West Coast teams, though they're kind of not in geographical regard, the Cincinnati Bengals are 2-8 when traveling to West Coast teams during the Marvin Lewis era.

In fact the Bengals have never won a game in Oakland, won once in five tries in San Francisco, are 5-10 all-time in San Diego and 2-12 in Denver. In games played in California, including when the Raiders and Rams played in Los Angeles, the Bengals are 9-30 all-time (.231 winning percentage).

Including the Seahawks, Cardinals (excluding when they were in St. Louis) and Broncos, the all-time winning percentage on the West Coast slightly improves to .238 at 15-48. The one caveat is that Cincinnati at least improved to .500 when playing games in Seattle after Cincinnati's 34-12 win in Week Eight last year.

Now we'd love to go all "Bengals are breaking trends" on you, much like the Bengals did last year.

Such as beating the Buffalo Bills for the first time in 20 years, winning a game in Jacksonville for the first time since 1995 or (as noted above) beating the Seahawks in Seattle for the first time since 1994.

On the other hand we could also point out that while the Chargers have lost to the Browns, their remaining seven losses are against teams in the postseason hunt like Denver, Baltimore, Tampa Bay, Atlanta and the media darlings in New Orleans. Hey look, the Bengals are in the postseason hunt.

Additionally the games lost on the West Coast during the Marvin Lewis era, Cincinnati has lost those games by a 3.1 point average with only one of those eight losses by more than a field goal.

So while we could point to history prognosticating Cincinnati's chances on Sunday, we'd highlight that this is an instance where history may not have much business with conjecturing the future.