CINCINNATI — Marvin Lewis illustrated the dichotomy between where the Cincinnati Bengals are and where they want to go in his last quote during his 24-minute, season-ending press conference.

“We’re going to tread new ground and we’re going to tread new water,” Lewis said.

Treading new ground is something Lewis and the Bengals haven’t been able to do since the franchise reboot and drafting of Andy Dalton and A.J. Green in 2011.

Yet again, the Bengals stalled out in the first round of the playoffs — for the fourth year in a row — which was no different than what it did two years prior the Dalton-Green era beginning.

Five first-round exits in six years means the Bengals have not been able to tread new ground. All they have done is tread water, keeping alive in a strong sea of competition without really going anywhere.

The core of the team is still young enough and solid enough that blowing up everything and starting anew doesn’t make sense. And a change at the top isn’t going to happen because there are two things team owner Mike Brown abhors — change, and paying someone not to work.

Lewis has one year left on his contract, and the Bengals have one year left before they can vacate Dalton’s contract without much damage. The 6-year, $96 million extension he signed in August easily can become a two-year, $25 million deal without much of a cap hit if the Bengals decide to part ways with Dalton after 2015.

Lewis, and most of the players in the locker room, admit they are sick of answering the same questions every year about not being able to win in the playoffs. But they also know the only way to make them stop is to win in the postseason.

No matter how well they draft in spring, how hard they work in the summer or how well they perform in the fall, Lewis and the Bengals will be judged on what they do next January.

And, if they ever get there, in February.

“My job is to win games and get the team to the Super Bowl. And win the Super Bowl, not just get there,” Lewis said “I’m disappointed for the football team. I’m disappointed for our fans. I’m disappointed for the city. The city needs to win on a big scale. Big time. They deserve it.

“And that’s what I’m disappointed in,” he continued. “It’s not about me, it’s about them. One day when I walk out of here, hopefully I leave that trophy in here, and I just keep on stepping. That’s all I want to do. I’m telling you, that’s all I want to do. And you’ll never hear from me again.”

Until then, everything is just treading water.

“We’ve got to wait eight months to build it back up again,” Lewis said. “But we will. And I think that part will be exciting. We’re going to have some new people. We’re going to be better. We’re going to be better than we were, and we’re going to be even more focused than we’ve been. We’re going to be more experienced with some of the guys, be less experienced with some of the others. But you know what, at the end of the day we’ll be OK, and we’ll be ready to go.”