Bengals bungle championship game and their reputation

When Harrison Butker's field goal sent the Kansas City Chiefs to Super Bowl LVII on Sunday, it saved us from two weeks of more lame trash talk from Cincinnati.

The Bengals went from a plucky, feel-good underdog to an annoying, reviled group who acted as if it had won the Super Bowl after winning three non-Super Bowls against the Chiefs the past two seasons.

Kansas City has an actual Lombardi Trophy -- and will play for a second in four seasons -- from this era of Chiefs football while the Bengals are only surrounded by haunting visions of Aaron Donald and Chris Jones.

Eli Apple, best known for allowing Cooper Kupp's winning touchdown for the Rams in Super Bowl LVI, took to Twitter after the team's divisional-round win at Buffalo to trash talk Stefon Diggs and Josh Allen.

Before Sunday's game, USA Today's Robert Zeglinski accurately suggested the Bengals were taking things too far off the field without achieving anything close to what the Chiefs have done recently. Cincinnati acted as though it was the team that was hosting a fifth consecutive AFC Championship Game, not the franchise three seasons removed from having the worst record in football. 

Cincinnati's embarrassing antics hit a nadir when Mayor Aftab Pureval released a video via social media ahead of the conference championship game. Included were statements "re-naming" Arrowhead Stadium "Burrowhead Stadium" and asking for Chiefs QB Patrick Mahomes to send a DNA sample to prove whether Burrow was his father.