The 1984 Cincinnati Bengals season was the team's 17th year in professional football and its 15th with the National Football League. The team lost their first five games, before winning eight of their final eleven games to finish the season with a .500 record.
The season was the first for head coach Sam Wyche, who had replaced former coach Forrest Gregg after Gregg had resigned following the previous season. Wyche had been the head coach at Indiana University in 1983.
The club stumbled out of the gate, and went winless in September en route to a 1-6 start. However, the team began a turnaround, and by December, was one of the hottest teams in the league. The team won seven out of their last nine games, including a crucial win against division rival Pittsburgh in week 11.
In the final week of the season, Cincinnati needed to win, and hope for the Steelers to lose at the Raiders, to secure an improbable AFC Central division title. The Bengals did their part, routing the Bills 52-21, and finished the season 8-8. Later in the day, the Bengals were forced to "scoreboard watch." The Steelers, however, managed to beat the Raiders, clinching the division, and effectively eliminating the Bengals from the playoffs.
Famous quotes containing the word season:
“The theater is a baffling business, and a shockingly wasteful one when you consider that people who have proven their worth, who have appeared in or been responsible for successful plays, who have given outstanding performances, can still, in the full tide of their energy, be forced, through lack of opportunity, to sit idle season after season, their enthusiasm, their morale, their very talent dwindling to slow gray death. Of finances we will not even speak; it is too sad a tale.”
—Ilka Chase (1905–1978)