The Cincinnati Bengals used to be the Houston Texans’ postseason tune-up game.
From 2011-12, the Texans hosted the Bengals in the AFC wild-cards and took care of business each time. To close out the 2010s, Houston won four playoff games while the Bengals still hadn’t won a postseason game since 1990.
Things changed in 2021, and now it appears the Bengals are going to get their wild-card wins when they get to the playoffs. Cincinnati held off the Baltimore Ravens 24-17 Sunday night at Paycor Stadium to advance to the AFC divisional round.
Here are four lessons the Texans can learn from how the Bengals were able to go from chumps to champs in such a short amount of time.