San Diego Chargers linebacker Takeo Spikes continues to make history every time he steps on the field.

A first-round pick of the Cincinnati Bengals in 1998, the 35-year-old Spikes has appeared in an NFL record 214 games without ever playing in the postseason.

And with the Chargers sitting at 4-7 heading into Sunday’s game against the Bengals, it doesn’t appear as though the dry spell will end in 2012.

“It’s frustrating,” said Spikes, who will turn 36 in December. “That’s what I’ve been playing for ever since I came in – just to have a chance to play for the ring. That’s been one of my biggest goals.

“As crazy as it may sound to you. I’m going to make it. I don’t know how, but I’m going to get there.”

Had he stayed in Cincinnati following the 2002 season, he likely would have already made it. But Spikes elected to enter free agency and signed with Buffalo two months after Marvin Lewis was hired as Bengals head coach in January 2003.

It’s a decision Spikes said he doesn’t regret regardless of his ongoing streak.

“I think what happened was supposed to happen, not only there, but continuing throughout my years,” he said. “I will tell you this: When people ask me if I have any regrets from being in Cincinnati, I tell them ‘no,’ because I truly think that made me the player and the person that I am today.”

Lewis, on the other hand, admitted regret about not being able to keep Spikes.

“I wish I would’ve done a better job,” Lewis said. “It’s one that got away. He would’ve been an outstanding player. I wish we could’ve got it done better.”

Spikes went on to make the Pro Bowl his first two years in Buffalo, but when the Bills began a youth movement after the 2006 season, he asked for a trade. He played one season in Philadephia and three in San Francisco before joining the Chargers last year.

The closest he came to making the playoffs was his second year in Buffalo when the Bills went 9-7 but lost out on the final wildcard spot in a tiebreaker.

“You want to pull for the guy and hope he makes the playoffs once,” Bengals safety Chris Crocker said. “I didn’t go to the playoffs until my seventh year, and he’s been around twice that. At some point your time is running out.”

Of the 72 players on the Bengals active roster, practice squad and injured reserve list, not a single one was even in the league when Spikes left Cincinnati for Buffalo, at which point he already was a veteran of five seasons.

Primarily a first- and second-down player, Spikes was on the field for 99 percent of the defensive snaps last week because of a groin injury to Donald Butler, the Chargers’ leading tackler. Spikes could see a similar workload Sunday as Butler has yet to practice this week.

Spikes said he has grown closer to Lewis over the years as the two have kept in touch since he decided to bolt the franchise before giving Lewis a chance.

The Bengals have made three postseason appearances since Spikes left, and Lewis said the team may have gone deeper in the playoffs had Spikes stayed.

The subject always seems to come up whenever they meet.

“We kind of run into each other at different functions and stuff and we always have the talks of ‘what if?’” Spikes said. “The ‘if’ talks are always good now. They’re always good. I’ve never had an ‘if’ talk that was bad.”