Andrew Whitworth on primetime games

Stop talking about the Bengals issues in prime time games.

Just stop.

That's the highlight of Andrew Whitworth's comments earlier this week. Despite being 2-4 in primetime games since 2011 and being 1-9 "in their last 10 Sunday night games", 3-12 overall and 1-8 on the road, Whitworth is tired of hearing about it.

"If we hadn't been in the playoffs three years in a row, this probably wouldn't even be a topic of conversation," Whitworth said via ESPN. "It's not a negative to be in the playoffs three times in a row. The truth of the matter is, there's some team in the playoffs every year getting beat for two teams to go to the Super Bowl. You've accomplished something to be there, and you've played a lot of obviously significant games to get there. You don't go 10-6 and 11-5 and not have won a game that meant something."

"That's one of those things that I think honestly is more of a national media, outside media thing to hold over us. It's like somebody wants to find some way to doubt you when the truth is, we've won our division, we've gotten better every single year, our record has gotten better every single year. So what's something you can come up with that's going to say 'this team is not there?' That's the one thing they can look for and say is that we can't play in prime-time. To me, people are always going to find a way to try and put a team down. That's what people look for. We don't really listen to it. But we just need to go out and play and have fun and beat the New England Patriots and go about our business."

With all due respect to Whitworth (and we respect him for staunchly defending the organization), primetime games and/or national games (like the wild card games) haven't been very kind to the Bengals and pointing that out isn't necessarily wrong. Based on our extensive research (aka, looking at this page), the Bengals haven't won a game on NBC since the network took over Sunday Night Football in '06. That also includes Wild Card games played on NBC. At least Cincinnati beat the Steelers on Monday Night Football in '13, but six years had passed since their previous Monday Night win -- a win over the Ravens in '07.

Anyway, it's unimportant. This is a different year with different scenarios, philosophies, coordinators, etc... And when/if the Bengals win Sunday Night, it's just another demon they've swatted away.