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The number, as of this posting, is 10,748. It might be bigger by the time you read this. It definitely will be bigger before it’s reset.

That’s how many days it’s been since the Bengals won a playoff game – a 41-14 trouncing of the Houston Oilers at Riverfront Stadium on Jan. 6, 1991 – a contest Paul Dehner Jr., Mo Egger and I relive in hilarious detail on the latest episode of Hear That Podcast Growlin’.

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It’s the longest active drought in the NFL at 29 seasons and counting, and it’s closing in on the dubious mark of being the longest in the Super Bowl era, a record the Saints own after failing to win a postseason game in their first 33 seasons of existence.

With the 30-year anniversary of that last playoff win approaching, we reached out to players and coaches from that team and asked them for their recollections, not just of the win against the Oilers, but also the loss the following week against the Raiders in Los Angeles when Bo Jackson’s career came to a sudden end and the 1990 season as a whole.

It might be hard to believe for anyone younger than 25 and has never seen the Bengals or the Reds advance in the postseason but Cincinnati was the named the City of the Year by Sports Illustrated. The Reds swept the A’s to win the World Series and before leading the Bengals to a division championship and their second playoff appearance in three seasons, head coach Sam Wyche made national news when he prohibited a female reporter from USA Today to enter the locker room after an early-season game.

What no one knew at the time was that 1990 would be the line of demarcation, separating the greatest era in Bengals history and the darkest period the franchise has ever known, going 55-137 from 1991-2002 to begin a run of 15 seasons without a postseason appearance and 29 without a playoff win.

The Bengals started fast in 1990, going 3-0 to help erase the disappointment of a 1989 season in which they went 8-8 and failed to make the playoffs after going to Super Bowl XXIII. But one big difference from the ’89 team was left guard Max Montoya, who had gone to the Pro Bowl in 1986, ’88 and ’89. The Bengals left Montoya unprotected in Play B free agency, and he signed with the Raiders, a team the Bengals were scheduled to play and ended up facing twice.

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Montoya: “I played 11 great years with the Bengals. We had some really, really good teams. We went to the Super Bowl twice. But after 11 years with the Bengals, I didn’t think my career was over. I knew I still had some gas in the tank. I played five more years with the Raiders. For me, that was a pretty good decision, really.”

After starting 3-0, the season got crazy in Week 4 when the Bengals were forced to embark on a five-game road trip after their Week 6 game against the Oilers and Week 7 contest against the Browns were switched from home to away to accommodate the Reds’ appearance in the World Series.

Jim Anderson, Bengals running backs coach from 1984-2012: “Playing five straight on the road, oh my god, that’s tough. Especially coming out of the blocks. That’s really tough. And you could tell that. I think we only won two of those five.”

Running back Eric Ball, who currently works as the team’s director of player relations: “It was a tough situation, but that team was a strong-knit team, a bonded team, and I would say guys were just going with the flow. It was just one of those ‘one game at a time’ mentalities, even if all of those games were on the road.”

It wasn’t just five consecutive road games, it was a Week 4 trip to Seattle and a Week 5 trip to Los Angeles after going to San Diego in Week 2. And a return trip to Los Angeles loomed in Week 14. But while the Bengals weren’t thrilled with the situation, it made it easier to accept knowing that it was due to the Reds playing for a championship.

Hall of Fame left tackle Anthony Muñoz: “Being the big baseball fan I am, I was at one or two of the World Series games. Even as a football player, you get caught up in the excitement because one of your home teams is doing so well. It’s a motivator and an incentive for you to kind of carry your load and do what you can with your professional team. Yeah, I remember it well. I think I took my daughter to one game and might have got to another game. It’s hard not to get caught up if you’re a sports fan and a professional athlete because you support each other and you want the best for each other.”

Safety Solomon Wilcots: “We knew a lot of those guys. Eric Davis. Barry Larkin. We were like, ‘Dude, go get it. We couldn’t do it in ’88, maybe you guys can do it.’ And guess what, they did. That was the game my good friend Eric Davis goes diving for a ball, lacerates his kidney, Marge Schott leaves him in Oakland. It was like, really? I remember all of that stuff. Those were good times. We were friends with all the Reds players. Paul O’Neill was on those teams. They were a good team. We were a good team. Cincinnati was a good sports town right at the end of the ’80s, early ’90s. I remember it like it was yesterday.”

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The first of the five consecutive road games was a Monday night contest in Seattle two days after the Reds clinched the National League West Division championship in wire-to-wire fashion. The 3-0 Bengals suffered their first loss of the year to the Seahawks 31-16, which was third the most newsworthy incident that happened that evening.

Wilcots: “That was also the same week where this conversation about women in the locker room was a big deal. Teams were saying they weren’t going to let them in. Other teams were like, ‘we don’t know.’ Sam comes to us and says. ‘Hey, guys. What do you want to do? Do you want to let them in the locker room or not?’ We looked at him like, ‘We ain’t making this decision. Don’t put this on us.’ Nobody said a word. And true to Sam, he said, ‘Don’t worry about it, guys. I’ll handle it.’ We kind of exhaled. We didn’t know it was getting ready to be that big of a deal.

“Next thing you know, I get back to my room the next day and Sam is on the Oprah Winfrey Show. He’s making headlines now. And he’s passing out these towels to wrap around our waist. On the front it a man’s two legs with a leaf hanging in front of the private parts. That image was on these towels. It was just a weird time. Why is this a big deal? But it had become a national topic. We found ourselves in the middle of it, and then we found our coach in the middle of it. So that was a huge distraction during the week.”

Things went from weird to worse. After Wyche banned the female reporter from the locker room after the game, several Bengals players participated in what a woman known in court documents as Victoria C. claimed was a rape at the team hotel in Seattle two nights later.

The Bengals stayed in Seattle after the loss because they were going to be in town all week before heading to L.A. to play the Rams rather than making another cross-country jaunt. The Victoria C. incident didn’t become public until she filed a lawsuit 18 months later. (Editor’s note: A Seattle jury decided that a settlement the plaintiff agreed to with players in exchange for $30,000 was valid. She appealed, but the 9th U.S. District Court of Appeals upheld the jury’s verdict.)

Ball: “That was a very disturbing week with all that took place.”

Anderson: “That was a turmoil week. That was the week from hell, so to speak. What’s on the surface and what’s underlying and real life are two different things. When you said we stayed in Seattle after the game and then went down to L.A., I  said, ‘Oh, shit. That was that week.’”

The Bengals elected to stay in Seattle because the organization didn’t want the players running around Los Angeles. The Bengals stayed in Seattle until Saturday, then flew to L.A. to play the Rams the next day and won 34-31 in overtime to go 4-1.

Muñoz: “I had never experienced that, especially in football. I played college baseball where we were in cities for a week or two playing, but never football. You go the day before and right after the game you fly home. But now we spent the whole week in Seattle, then flew down to L.A. to play in Anaheim. We were flying back and forth to the west coast a lot. My family loved it because they got to come to a lot of my games in person. But it is strange when you’re going back and forth to the west coast that often.”

Wilcots: “We lost the Monday night game we shouldn’t have lost. One thing we ain’t gonna do is come home after losing two in a row. Your season could be over quick like that. So we’re going to L.A. to play the Rams. I’m ecstatic because I was born and raised in L.A. It was my first time back to play the Rams. We went toe to toe with them. Jim Breech kicked a game-winning field goal. It might have even gone into overtime, I believe. And we got out of there. I met my family in the parking lot and I was so happy we won. We came back feeling good. That was a huge relief. But that’s how that season started. Everything was just hard for us. When we won in ’88, it was easy. We’re winning in ’90 and it’s like every win is like pulling teeth, man. Those wins were difficult to come by.”

After going 2-3 on the road trip, the Bengals fell to 5-3. But because the sites for the Oilers and Browns games were flipped, they got to play six of their final eight at home. They crushed the Oilers 40-20 at Riverfront in Week 16 to move into a tie for second in the AFC Central, one game behind the Steelers. James Brooks ran for a career-high and franchise-record 201 yards in the win.

Brooks: “(Houston) was quick, but our offensive line was great. (The Oilers) wanted to hit you because they’re thinking about trying to fight. They’re trying to get in your head. Our offensive line, all they needed to know was once they pushed them, I’ll cut off what you do. And once they get up on them, basically that’s it then for me. I’m in the secondary. And from there it’s going to be a one on one and I’m just going to outrun them. They ain’t gonna solve it.”

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The Bengals beat the Browns in Week 17 to finish 9-7. Wyche then invited reporters to his house to watch the Steelers-Oilers game. An Oilers win would give the Bengals the division title, and Houston came through with a 34-14 victory to earn a trip back to Cincinnati, where they had lost by 20 two weeks earlier and by 54 at the end of 1989 when Wyche ran up the score due to his dislike of Houston head coach Jerry Glanville.

Ball: “I remember very distinctively the dislike the two of them had for each other. When it came to Houston there was a little extra oomph in those games. And that didn’t go away when Jerry left and Jack Pardee took over in 1990.”

Muñoz: “It felt more like it did in the ’80s, with the players being rivals. The players on the field, not the coaches. They were always a big rival. If you could keep it in perspective and not let it affect you on the field, which I thought we did a nice job, it was always a nice sideshow between Sam and Jerry Glanville.”

Pardee’s Oilers brought their run-and-shoot offense to Riverfront Stadium as 3.5-point underdogs.

Wilcots: “Those Houston teams were really good. They were loaded with first-round picks, and of course Warren Moon. But the strength of our team was always a secondary. They torched everybody else, but nobody ever just shredded us in the passing game. It just didn’t happen. We always felt like we matched up with them very well. As good as they were, don’t get me wrong, we knew how good they were, but (defensive coordinator) Dick LeBeau, we felt like he was our secret weapon. So we were just so confident no matter who we played.”

But the Bengals especially felt good about facing an Oilers run-and-shoot offense that would be without the services of future Hall of Fame quarterback Warren Moon, who had suffered a dislocated thumb on his throwing hand two weeks earlier in the loss at Cincinnati. Moon’s absence left Cody Carlson to deal with the Bengals defense in cold, rainy weather.

Anderson: “The biggest thing, quite honest, was the fact that we were playing at home. That time of year and you’re playing the Houston Oilers at home, even though they didn’t have Moon, it was an advantage. They didn’t play great in cold weather, especially at our place. When you play down in that dome now and them boys could throw it and spread it around and everything, it was great. But when you get in that cold weather and you’re getting hit, old Dick LeBeau would say that’s Bengal weather. And it truly was. You put them pads on those guys, they keep looking. Instead of catching, they’re looking.”

Carlson was dreadful in the first half, completing 4 of 10 passes for 35 yards with an interception as the Oilers didn’t record a first down until 28 seconds before halftime and went into the locker room trailing 20-0 after the Bengals scored on four of their first five possessions despite losing Pro Bowl running back James Brooks to – as the NBC cameras would capture and replay four times – a gruesome thumb injury.

Brooks: “It was cold, very cold, and what happened was went I went down, I spread my fingers and all that weight came down on my thumb, and that’s why it snapped in half. You could look down inside of it. I went to the sideline and said, ‘Can you tape this up right quick?’ And the trainer looked at me like, ‘Are you crazy?’ I was like, ‘No big deal. Let’s go. C’mon.’ Later the doctor came over and said you can’t go back in because it’s broke in half.”

Rookie Harold Green took over and caught a 13-yard touchdown pass from Boomer Esiason in addition to rushing 11 times for 55 yards, but he left late in the first half with a knee injury that would keep him out the following week against the Raiders. That left Ickey Woods, who scored the first touchdown in the game, and Ball, who scored a touchdown in the second half, to carry the load. They also got help from Esiason, who had a 27-yard scramble and a 10-yard touchdown on his way to one of the biggest rushing games of his career with 57 of the team’s 187 yards.

After the 41-14 win, NBC sideline reporter O.J. Simpson was interviewing Wyche on the sideline when Esiason “goosed” the Hall of Fame running back and future double-murder suspect. That led to a wacky segment in which Esiason and Simpson talked about wearing makeup and pantyhose more than the game itself. You can watch the interaction at the 2:18:10 mark of the game broadcast on YouTube. Still shots from the interview would reappear four years later in Simpson’s double-murder trial as the gloves and shoes he is wearing were key pieces of evidence. While that interview was happening, other members of the team were planning a trip to the hospital to visit Brooks when he came out of surgery.

Brooks: “When they took me off the field, they basically put me in the ambulance and took me to the hospital and I had surgery on it. Then after the game, all the guys came up to the hospital to see me. And of course, players will be players. They brought beer. But (the doctors) had given me medicine. We’re sitting there drinking a beer and of course, everything came up, and they kicked them out of the room. They’re looking at us like all y’all are crazy. I was like, ‘Ah, they just wanted to check on me and make sure I was fine.’ They were like, ‘You can’t drink no beer after you took medicine.’ I was like, ‘Well, ain’t nothing I can do now.’”

There would be a lot more puking in the week to come as a flu bug ripped through the team, compounding the injury issues affecting Brooks, Muñoz, Green and left guard and Montoya replacement Bruce Reimers.

Anderson: “The flu didn’t get everybody, it just got key players. What it does is it throws off your preparation because you don’t know who’s going to be ready when. That just threw a monkey wrench into the whole mix, the continuity of what we were trying to do and who we were trying to do it with.”

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Wilcots: “I had the flu. But all my years playing football or basketball as a kid, I remember at least half a dozen times having the flu, getting out of bed the next day, playing the game and playing the game of my life. The Michael Jordan thing, I get it. You go back and look at Joe Montana. He had a flu game against Houston when he was with Notre Dame. He played the game of his life. I do remember that week. I can’t remember who all was sick, but I remember being sick. I remember missing a practice that week, calling in. I didn’t know that other people were calling in. I couldn’t even get in the car and drive. If I stay in bed, I’ll be OK. That’s how I felt.”

While some players caught it earlier in the week, others – Esiason and Brooks notably – were dealing with it once the team landed in Los Angeles to face the Raiders and Montoya for the second time in a month after losing 24-7 in Week 15.

Montoya: “Just the buildup outside of the arena outside of the playing field, it’s all that you are thinking, ‘Wow, this is different playing against the guys you practiced against and played with.’ And then it all comes down to gameday and when you come through the tunnel into the playing field it all changes and then it’s strictly football, business, take care of your guy in front of you and win the game.”

Anderson: “That was a concern because Max knew our language. When that happens, they alert their new teammates of code words you’re using. You go through the season and you like to change things up, but a lot of times you don’t because people prefer to do what they’ve been doing. When you change something up and you don’t work on it continually, you’re subject to make a mistake, especially in a critical time in the game. So we always relied on the proven way, the tried and true way. I’m sure Max probably shared a little bit with them as far as the language and the code words.”

Brooks was able to play with his broken thumb, but he was still battling the flu during the game.

Ball: “The thing that really sticks out to me about that game was James Brooks was sick. I remember him being out on the field, he’s in his stance before the snap of the ball and he vomits. Then he raises his head back up, we snap the ball and takes off and gets the handoff and goes for a run.”

While Brooks played, Green, Reimers and, most significantly, Muñoz were unable to go. Muñoz’s replacement, undrafted rookie Kirk Scrafford, gave up one of Raiders defensive end Greg Townsend’s three sacks on the first play of the game.

Anderson: “When you don’t have Anthony, you’ve got to make a whole lot of change. This is Anthony. We can say he’s got this guy and know he’s got him, now we can help whoever we need to help. But when you don’t have Muñoz, now it changes everything.”

It was the first non-replacement-players game Muñoz missed in his first 11 seasons in the league. He had torn his rotator cuff in the regular-season game against the Oilers but continued playing through it, although he left the playoff game early in the second half once the Bengals built a 34-0 lead.

Muñoz: “There were times (in the Wild Card playoff game) I would pull away from the defender and feel like he kept my arm in his hand. I prepared and I was ready (for the Raiders). I figured an extra day of rest would help. I didn’t do anything Friday and then Saturday when we were out there. But it just didn’t come around. My treatment was ice, and that was about it. I wasn’t about to shoot anything in it. So I didn’t. And I guess it just got to a point where I couldn’t handle it. A lot of times it might not be feeling good and you want to test it in pregame. There’s a lot of times where in pregame warmups you’re banged up most of the time and you can get over it with adrenaline. But I guess I kind of exhausted all my adrenaline in the previous three weeks. There was just no way it responded, even after Sunday’s pregame warmups.”

No injury, of course, is more storied from that game than the one two-sport star Jackson suffered early in the third quarter when Bengals linebacker Kevin Walker tackled him from behind, resulting in a career-ending fractured hip.

Wilcots: “We didn’t want to hurt him. Nobody wants to do that. Bo Jackson was like Michael Jordan to all of us. All of our families, we met him. When they wheeled him out after the game, we were all like, ‘Hey, Bo, we wish you the best, man. Hang in there, bro.’ We didn’t know we were watching him for the last time. We didn’t want him hurt or maimed in any kind of way. We had so much respect that dude. He was a torchbearer.”

Brooks, who had been snubbed for the Pro Bowl in favor of Jackson, certainly took notice of the injury.

Brooks: “I had 1,100 or 1,200 yards, right? (1,273 rushing and receiving yards). And they put Bo Jackson on there. And Bo didn’t have but 700-some yards (698). I could be off on that, but he wasn’t over 1,000 yards. When Kevin Walker hit Bo and we saw him down, Rodney Holman said, ‘I guess you’ll be going to the Pro Bowl.’ I said, ‘I should’ve been there already.’ But I know Bo. I felt bad from that point.”

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The Raiders only led 7-3 at the time as the Bengals were hanging around as 7-point underdogs despite a curiously conservative decision by Wyche to run out the clock in the first half despite having it at their own 31 with 2:00 to go and all three timeouts. And despite another impactful play involving Jackson on his first carry of the game when linebacker James Francis forced a fumble that safety Barney Bussey recovered. But the officials ruled the whistle had blown, and the Raiders kept the ball at their own 46.

Wilcots: “Dude, do you know how hard it was to stop that guy? We played them out there earlier in the year and he ran hog wild on us. And now we’ve got to play this dude again. We’re like, ‘We’re stopping this dude.’ But you didn’t get Bo to fumble anything, man. That was putting in work. Listen, I’m used to a lot of that, being a defensive back. You cannot lament whatever happens on the field. You better move on, and you better move on quick. We moved on. Next thing you know, we put him out of the game.”

Marcus Allen, who only averaged 3.8 yards per carry that year, ran wild behind Montoya and the rest of the Raiders line with Jackson out. Allen had 140 yards – his most since 1985 – as the Raiders finished with 235 yards on the ground.

Montoya: “That was something. It was kind of funny. The first regular-season game when we played the Bengals and we played them at the Coliseum it was like, hey buddy, how you doing Big Joe (Walter) and Anthony and this was in the locker rooms and such. When it came to the playoffs, it was like they were marching soldiers. They didn’t say a peep to me. I think they had orders from the top or maybe Sam Wyche said don’t you talk and buddy-up to Montoya. I thought that was wild.”

The Bengals tied the game 10-10 with 12 minutes to go, but the Raiders answered on the next drive, converting a third and 20 that led to Jay Schroeder hitting tight end Ethan Horton for a game-winning 41-yard touchdown. The Raiders added a field goal with nine seconds to go for the final 20-10 margin. That began the run of eight consecutive playoff losses and ushered in the decade of darkness that some attribute to the Curse of Bo Jackson.

Montoya: “Many people tell me it was the Curse of Montoya. When I left the Bengals, they never won a playoff game.”

Wilcots: “The two guys I admired when I came to Cincinnati more than anybody else was Anthony Muñoz and Max Montoya. Because I grew up in southern California. I watched those guys play at USC and UCLA, and I just felt like they were big brothers to me. I looked up to them in every way. So now I found myself on a team with Anthony Muñoz and Max Montoya, I’m just like over the moon. Then when we let Max go, I called Max and I said, ‘What in the hell is going on? Why did you leave?’ Max is like, “Solomon, they didn’t want me.’ ‘What do you mean they didn’t want you?’ I’m like a young kid. I’m about to cry. How do we let Max Montoya go? Plan B free agency. We just let him go for free. Are you kidding me?”

The Raiders loss was Wilcots’ final game as a Bengal. And while some were shocked by the freefall the team took in the ’90s, he was not one of them.

Wilcots: “We were letting a lot of guys go. For every player that I saw leave, the guy replacing him wasn’t even close. I already said, winning those games became harder and harder, right? Listen, when you’re in the league four years, you know whether your team is appreciating or depreciating. Well, I’m sitting here telling you that when I was left unprotected in 1990 and two of my teammates come to my apartment, Eric Thomas and Ickey Woods, they said what are you going to do? I said, ‘I would love to stay, but I’m going to tell you guys, I don’t think the team’s going to be very good.’ I started going down the roster, ‘Look at him. Look here. Look who’s playing. You guys know these guys aren’t as good as the guys we just had. Come on. We’ve got guys leaving who are much better than the guys who are coming.’”

Wilcots finished his career with the Vikings and Steelers. But it took Brooks a little longer to see the downfall coming. One year to be exact. After the playoff loss to the Raiders, the Bengals went 3-13 in 1991 and fired Sam Wyche, replacing him with Dave Shula, who had one year of NFL experience as the Bengals wide receivers coach on the ’91 team.

Brooks: “Dave Shula was the worst coach ever. I was like, who gave this guy a job? It’s not what you know, it’s who you know. Everybody laughed about (his hiring). He couldn’t coach a JV team. I didn’t have no respect for him, and I guarantee 85 percent of the guys didn’t have no respect for him. It didn’t make sense to make him the head coach after one year.”

Muñoz: “That was a very difficult time. My last year was under the Shula regime. I thought there was some pretty good talent, but there’s a difference between having a group of talented guys and a group that’s a team. I just didn’t feel that cohesiveness.”

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Wilcots: “I call the ’90s the lost decade. Eric Thomas and Ickey Woods, we joke every now and then, I say, ‘I knew it was coming. I’m glad I missed those years.’”

Marvin Lewis ushered in a new era in 2003 and broke the playoff drought in 2005. He led the team to the postseason in six of seven seasons from 2009-2015. But he was 0-7 in the playoffs, leaving the Bengals sitting at 10,748 days without a postseason victory.

Wilcots: “They went to the playoffs seven times under Marvin. That’s pretty good. Now, they didn’t win. They should’ve won that Chargers game. They should’ve won the Jets. They should’ve won a lot of those games. There were at least four of those games they should have won. Jeremy Hill. Ugh. UGH! And then the meltdown by the other guys. But Jeremy Hill, the fumble itself. Are you kidding me? So there you go. They’re a little snakebitten.”

(Photo: Ed Reinke / Associated Press)

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