Congrats to Marvin and Offseason Issues

First off, I’d like to say congratulations to Marvin Lewis for winning the AP Coach of the Year award. Even though he’s not a perfect coach (really, who is), I feel that he deserved the award. He helped turn around a team that was 4-11-1 last year into a playoff team that went 10-7.  Plus he had to lead a team that had to deal with all the adversity with the deaths of Vikki Zimmer and Chris Henry.

People could make cases for the other coaches, but, really, Marvin was the best choice. The other choices were all on teams that had winning records the previous year. The Colts coach Jim Caldwell probably was the most deserving behind Marvin because he was a rookie coach and the Colts had to break in a ton of new receivers. Still, Caldwell had Peyton Manning. I mean, it’s Peyton Manning. If he had been on the Browns, Mangini would’ve been coach of the year.

So anyway, the coach of the year accolade really means nothing, except it’s a nice gesture.  The Bengals, nevertheless, have many issues to deal with over the course of the offseason. I’ve been thinking about all these issues since the Bengals lost to the Jets, and there are many solutions to these myriad issues. Whenever I think about them, I’m reminded of Keenan Thompson’s political commentary on SNL. If there’s a problem, his solution is to FIX IT! How should people go about fixing said problems? His advice is to just FIX IT! That’s how a normal fan feels with any sports team. They don’t care HOW it is fixed, just that it IS fixed.

With that in mind, here are my FIX IT issues for 2010:

1. Carson Palmer: For many years Bengals fans could hang their hat on having a top five, Pro Bowl QB. Do we still have that? I’d like to think that, but after Carson’s performance against the Jets in a playoff game, I’m not too sure. I don’t know if Carson can reproduce his great seasons of 05 and 06, but I think he can be better and more consistent than this past season. I don’t think Carson’s inaccuracy was all his fault; other than Chad his wide receivers didn’t do a great job at getting open and/or catching the ball. But some of his throws throughout the season were off the mark. He was at his best in late game situations, and he was mediocre to bad in just about every other situation. I don’t know exactly what to do, but he needs to FIX IT.

Read More: http://bengals.gearupforsports.com/blog/2010/01/lewis-is-coach-of-the-year-and-offseason-issues-to-fix/