Bengals

The Bengals' fiercest feud runs against the Pittsburgh Steelers, a divisional grudge match that has produced some of the meanest football in the AFC North.

Paul Brown, the Hall of Fame coach who put the franchise together in 1967, had built the Browns before Cleveland's owner pushed him out, and when he launched his new team in Cincinnati he dressed it in orange as a pointed nod to the club he had lost, with black added alongside. Brown coached the Bengals themselves from 1968 to 1975, and his son Mike Brown has owned it since 1991.

Three trips to the Super Bowl have ended the same way. The Bengals lost to the San Francisco 49ers after the 1981 and 1988 seasons, then fell to the Los Angeles Rams following the 2021 campaign, leaving three AFC Championships won but the league's biggest prize still out of reach. Eleven division titles have come in two different eras — five in the old AFC Central through 1990, six more in the AFC North since 2005 — with the run of three in four years from 2021 to 2022 marking the club's most recent stretch of contention.

Anthony Muñoz anchored the offensive line through that first Super Bowl era and had his number 75 retired, one of only four numbers the club has taken out of circulation. Zac Taylor has coached the team since 2019, the head that steered it back to a Super Bowl in 2021 and to another division title the following year, and the AFC North remains the target as the Bengals look to turn division form into something that survives the playoffs.