Of Elvis, Marty, Chuck, Paul and Jerry

By Steve King

It’s a four–team race in the AFC North again, and I couldn’t be happier.

Indeed, bring it on!

It came with a Cincinnati Bengals’ 19-16 victory over the Los Angeles Rams on Monday NightFootball. Had the Bengals lost, they would have been 0-3 and their season would’ve been over. They would have, in effect, been eliminated from the race almost before it started. But the defending dibudion champs and the class of the North the last several years are back in the race. They are 1–2 and just a game behind the the first- place teams in the Browns, the Baltimore Ravens and the Pittsburgh Steelers, all at 2–1.

I suspect that these four teams will battle it out right down until the very end. Who knows what’s going to happen, but I would not be at all surprised if three teams from
the division make the playoffs. The North is that good.

This harkens back to the days of the 1980s, when the predecessor of the North, the AFC Central, with a Browns, Steelers, Houston Oilers and Bengals waged war every year.

The Browns had a head coach in Marty Schottenheimer who grew up in Pittsburgh. The Steelers had a head coach in Chuck Noll who grew up in Cleveland and played for the Browns. The Bengals were owned by Paul Brown, who was the founding head coach of the Browns franchise, and the Oilers had a head coach in Jerry Glanville, a Perrysburg, Ohio native, who would do everything he could to tweak the other three teams in the division. An eccentric guy, he would leave tickets at the window for Elvis Presley every week. I wonder if the singer ever showed up?

The division was a real rivalry back then, with all four teams very much involved, but I think that’s going to happen again this year.

Buckle your seatbelt, for here we go!