The Bengals look bad. Rock-bottom bad. No. 1 pick, Suck-for-Sam, Lose-for-Lamar bad.

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The Bengals didn’t approach the 2017 season trying to “rebuild,” or “emphasize youth,” or “bring in your own people,” or any of the other euphemisms in play to avoid admitting to tanking. They also didn’t botch the health decisions of their starting quarterbacks, like certain Midwest-based teams with a franchise quarterback to nurture.

All the Bengals did in Sunday’s season-opener was stink up their home field, skidding into a ditch early on and never steering out of it. They were shut out at home, 20-0, by a division rival, the Ravens, who had issues of their own coming into this season and struggled badly to score themselves for most of the first half.

It’s possible that the Bengals just got off to an ugly start, or had a lot of kinks to work out, or had bad luck, or caught a Ravens team on a good roll.

Possible, but unlikely.

NFL SCORES: Week 1 results

The signs were there last season when the Bengals stumbled around, reverting to their old undisciplined ways, struggled badly without the suspended Vontaze Burfict early, and fell apart at midseason on their way to a 6-9-1 record. A.J. Green missed most of the second half of the year. Andy Dalton regressed. Their run of five straight playoff berths ended.

They brought back Marvin Lewis for his 15th season. They made their usual tweaks in the draft and free agency. Burfict got suspended again. None of it provided any faith that they could rejoin the Steelers and — maybe — the Ravens in AFC North contention.

As of now — one game, very early, a tiny sample size — the Bengals are competing with the Browns for the basement. And with the Jets and the rest as the very dregs of the league.

The Texans looked at the Bengals’ debut in horror. That’s how bad it was.

In fact, Houston might be rubbing its palms together in anticipation for Thursday’s game in Cincinnati, which is pretty humiliating considering the beatdown they were handed by Jacksonville.

The loser, seriously, might want to start planning to be on the clock the day the season ends.

The Texans at least can hang their hats on Deshaun Watson, their first-round pick rushed into that mess. Dalton himself was the mess for the Bengals. His ineptitude made the Ravens’ defense look like the unit that won their two Super Bowls. There was no Ray Lewis or Ed Reed in sight … Terrell Suggs, yes, but the comparisons can pretty much end there.

Again, the Ravens’ offense with Joe Flacco in charge for the first time all year was as halting and ineffective as it had been without him in the preseason. A better team would have capitalized on all of Dalton’s gifts — four interceptions, a fumble, an awful throwaway of a pass on fourth down deep in Ravens territory when there was time to make Baltimore sweat out the end.

Better teams are going to take advantage of them.

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The Bengals showed few, if any, signs that they can scare anybody. They look like less than the sum of their parts, and they don’t have a lot of parts. Dalton has been a lot better, but it’s on him to be better.

And it’s on Lewis to prove he deserved to come back, even after rumors late last season that he was about to retire were proven untrue. There is no turning the heat down on him now, and the talk that his time has run out will not slow down after that debacle.

It shouldn’t. The Bengals did not look ready to start their season.

They looked ready to open the 2018 draft.