Cincinnati Bengals owner Mike Brown remains confident in quarterback Andy Dalton despite his mediocre career playoff record.

The Bengals are committed in 2015 to Dalton, who is 0-4 in the playoffs — four consecutive first-round losses.

The Bengals have one year left before they can vacate Dalton’s contract without much damage. The six-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.

“Andy is a good quarterback,” Brown told the Cincinnati Enquirer before the NFL owners meetings got underway in Phoenix. “I was talking to somebody with another team and he was going on about things in general and he made the off-the-cuff remark, of course, you guys have a quarterback.

“You go round and about and Andy is perceived higher by some people than he seems to be all the time locally. He is the style of guy who can function best when he has a good group around him. He needs that. Maybe he needs it more than some, but they all need it. There is no quarterback that goes out and has success without good players in the mix.

“We ran out of gas last year at the end. You can’t talk about it because it’s considered whining and you are put down for it if you do. But we understood what it meant to.”

Brown, of course, wants to see the Bengals go deeper in January.

“We know full well we haven’t won a playoff game. People seem to think we are unaware of it. We aren’t. We want to get to the playoffs again and that’s very difficult. We are going to strive to do that. That’s where our focus is going to be. If we get another crack at it everyone in this organization wants to win when we do that.

“But I am not going to distract the team or say something that the public misinterprets. Our focus is literally on who do we play in Game One of the regular season. Then just taking one at a time. That’s the old cliche but that’s all you can do. You start focus on something grander than that and you are just going to run yourself aground.”

Brown also discussed head coach Marvin Lewis, who enters the final season of his deal still without an extension.

“We have done this kind of arrangement with Marvin off and on through the years,” Brown told the newspaper. “This is not the first time. It’s not something unusual at all to expect people to fulfill their contract before you talk about their next contract.

“I think Marvin has done a fine job with us. He’s been with us for a long time now. We have a good relationship. I hope that relationship goes forward into the future. But we aren’t at the future yet. We don’t have to make this decision until after this year. He doesn’t have to make this decision until next year. Right now he’s under contract and he’s fulfilling it as we would expect and he knows he should.”