The Bengals are no strangers to heartbreak. Even so, January's Wild Card playoff loss to the Steelers was devastating even by Cincinnati standards.
An ill-timed Jeremy Hill fumble, and back-to-back personal foul penalties by Vontaze Burfict and Adam Jones set the stage for a late field goal and an 18-16 defeat that had to be seen to be believed.
It was Cincinnati's fifth-consecutive one-and-done playoff exit, and easily the most painful. Bengals coach Marvin Lewis says the only way to move on from that type of devastation is to hit the reset button.
"April 18 is an important day," Lewis told NFL Media's Albert Breer, referring to the start of Cincinnati's offseason program.
What does Lewis hope to take out of the loss?
"To press on," he told Breer. "There's nothing they can do about it now. We're gonna learn to answer the question and press on. Everyone keeps bringing it up. We have to move on. It's done and gone. April 18, it gets buried. It gets exorcised. And then we move on and we've got put our heads down and do everything we can to earn our way back into the playoffs."
The Bengals won't totally move past the events of Jan. 10 until around October. Burfict was suspended three games for his helmet-to-helmet hit on Steelers wide receiver Antonio Brown in the loss.
