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The 2021–22 NFL playoff bracket featured seven teams that had not reached the postseason the year before. The most stunning among them, obviously, were the Super Bowl runner-up Bengals, who finished the previous season 4-11-1. Their transcendent star quarterback suffered an incredibly serious knee injury in 2020, and their forays into free agency seemed, from a 30,000 foot view, to be mere pebbles in a quarry.
How wrong we were.
