CINCINNATI — When the Cincinnati Bengals and Los Angeles Rams left SoFi Stadium after Super Bowl LVI in February 2022, the Bengals were the team that seemed most likely to be back one day.
Despite the loss, Cincinnati had the rising stars, led by quarterback Joe Burrow, which positioned the franchise well for years to come. The Rams’ big moves yielded a Lombardi Trophy, but it was going to take substantial work to reposition the franchise into a contender.
But four years later, the Rams were the ones that were a few plays away from being back in the Super Bowl. And Cincinnati is the club trying to figure out how to be a playoff team again.
As the Bengals prepare for a pivotal offseason, the Rams can serve as a case study of how to maximize a championship window. Stockpiling draft picks, making good selections and strong roster management have helped Los Angeles sustain success.
And the Rams had a very simple strategy.
“Let’s make sure the players care about being a really good football player and being a part of a team,” Rams general manager Les Snead said at his end-of-season news conference Wednesday. “At the end of the day, let’s try to find good football players from there.”
Since the Super Bowl at the end of the 2021 season, the Rams and Bengals have nearly identical regular-season records. Both teams have the same number of losses. (Los Angeles has one more win and a 37-31 record; Cincinnati’s 2022 game against Buffalo was canceled because of Damar Hamlin’s cardiac arrest.)
But that 2022 season was Cincinnati’s most recent as a contender. The Bengals lost in the AFC Championship Game that season, while the Rams went 5-12. But fortunes have flipped over the past three years.
Since the 2023 season, the Bengals are one of nine teams that have not made the playoffs. Los Angeles has three playoff wins during that same span and pushed the Seattle Seahawks to the brink in a 31-27 loss in this season’s NFC Championship Game.
The way Cincinnati and Los Angeles have fared in the draft helps explain the differences.
The Rams effectively replaced wide receiver Cooper Kupp, the Super Bowl LVI MVP who scored the game-winning touchdown, with Puka Nacua, a fifth-round selection who has blossomed into one of the best receivers in the league.
But the others in the Rams’ 2023 draft class have fared well, too. Edge rusher Byron Young and defensive tackle Kobie Turner, two third-round picks, have been very productive. Young is a two-time Pro Bowler. Along with defensive end Jared Verse, the team’s only first-round selection since 2016, Los Angeles has offset the departure of Aaron Donald, arguably the greatest interior pass rusher of all time. Since 2022, the Rams have gotten 87.5 combined sacks from players they drafted. Cincinnati has 24 sacks during that same span.
“We were going to have to definitely remodel, build and keep adding to that defensive line and to that defensive front,” Snead said Wednesday. “Still be a disruptive front, just do it in a different way.”
One of the silver linings from Cincinnati’s disappointing 2025 season was the emergence of defensive end Myles Murphy, a 2023 first-round pick who finished with a career-high 5.5 sacks last season. For Bengals de facto general manager Duke Tobin, that late-season flourish tinted his view of the future positively.
“It would be a different story if I didn’t see young players progressing and I didn’t see a progression of understanding, knowledge and execution of our defense,” Tobin said in an unprecedented end-of-season news conference in January.
But Cincinnati can also take note of how aggressive the Rams have been in stockpiling picks through the draft and in free agency.
Beginning in 2020, the Rams have made 41 selections on picks received via trade or the NFL’s compensatory process for losing free agents, according to an analysis by ESPN Research. The Minnesota Vikings lead the league with 43 of those selections. The Bengals are last with 12.
In recent months, the Bengals have pointed to those deep playoff runs in 2021 and 2022 as proof that the franchise can compete at the highest level. But the team that recently stopped Cincinnati from winning the Super Bowl has proved that a championship window can always remain ajar under the right circumstances.
ESPN Rams reporter Sarah Barshop contributed to this report.
