I don’t have a lot of memories of high school. 
Sun Sports Editor
It’s not like anything particularly bad happened, I just have a terrible memory. There’s a reason I have to keep Bluetooth trackers on my keys and in my wallet.
One of the strongest memories from that time was the 2011 NFL Draft. I was a senior at Western Brown that year, and in my History of Sport class we tended to have a little bit of free time.
My friend, Ryan, and I would begin that free time pretty much the same way every day from the NFL Combine that February to the draft itself: a quick turn in a chair, a slap of the desk and a shout: ‘DRAFT TALK!’
Can you blame us for being excited? The Bengals had exactly two winning seasons and two playoff berths since 1993, the year I was born. Both seasons ended in playoff losses. The Bengals had a high pick in the draft that year for the first time in a while, and I finally had cable television and I was going to be able to watch the entire thing for the first time.
That was the year the Bengals took A.J. Green in the first round and Andy Dalton in the second. Most people know what happened next.
Five straight playoff appearances, even though they all ended in losses, were more than enough to hook me for life. I hadn’t seen that kind of regular-season success in Cincinnati before.
Those playoff losses are always going to be the thing that puts a damper on Andy’s record. He didn’t lose the fifth game, having injured his thumb in 2015, but the first four defeats went on his ledger.
You can blame injuries for some of the losses. At least one can be pinned on Andy himself having a terrible game (the 2014 loss to the Chargers comes to mind), and I know there are no trophies for just participating in the NFL playoffs, but man did it ever feel good to get there consistently.
Certainly felt a lot better than the last four seasons have. Once the supporting cast around Andy began to fall apart, sometimes figuratively and sometimes literally, it became apparent that he wasn’t the type of quarterback to do more with less.
In four of his first five seasons, he was sacked fewer than 30 times. In 2016 that number jumped to 41. Andy was sacked at least 37 times in three of his final four seasons, with an injury-shortened 2018 campaign the lone exception.
He lost stalwarts on the offensive line in Kevin Zeitler and Andrew Whitworth. Offensive weapons in Andrew Hawkins, Mohammed Sanu and Marvin Jones signed elsewhere right around the same time injuries began to bug AJ Green.
He spent the better part of the last two seasons throwing to guys like Alex Erickson and Cody Core due to injuries in the receiving corps. That’s not going to help the team move the ball, as we found out several times last year.
And yet, by no means should the last four years define Andy’s Cincinnati career. He’s the team leader in touchdown passes, a mark I had the pleasure of watching him set live against the Jets last year.
He also leads the team in completions, fourth-quarter comebacks, game-winning drives and consecutive starts.
Andy’s passer rating (87.5) and his 28 300-yard passing games are also franchise marks. He’s also the only Bengals quarterback to ever catch a touchdown pass.
He’s second in career completion percentage (61.7) and his 33 touchdown passes in 2013 are a team record for a single season.
I can throw numbers out there until you’re blue in the face, but the bottom line is the only one that matters to Bengals fans is this one: zero.
Andy never won a playoff game. For a franchise that hasn’t won a postseason contest since 1991, that stat will likely be the one that defines his career, but it shouldn’t.
His impact on the team was much more than that. Andy’s on-field work barely holds a candle to the things his foundation did off the field.
Even at the end of his tenure with the Bengals, he was making a mark in the community, having donated $150,000 to Cincinnati Children’s Hospital.
After the team beat Baltimore on a last-second touchdown pass to Tyler Boyd a few years back, sending Buffalo to the playoffs, donations to the Andy and J.J. Dalton Foundation poured in.
Andy returned the love, donating to the Roswell Park Cancer Center in Buffalo in 2018.
That’s the kind of player and the kind of person Andy is. I know they won’t be, but I really hope his off-field accomplishments are weighed just as heavily by Cincinnati’s fans.
Writing this was tough. I haven’t quite figured out what to say, how to sum up what the last decade or so have meant to me as a fan. I know I can’t speak for the entire fanbase, but from me, personally, I have one thing left to say.
Thank you, Andy.