Since the regular season ended, there's been a lot of uncertainty surrounding assistant coaches this offseason. Many assume a majority of the coaches will return, such as Mike Zimmer, Jim Anderson and Paul Alexander to name a few. Others hope that the team will go in another direction for other aspects of the team, such as replacing offensive coordinator Bob Bratkowski, who hasn't put together an offense that's ranked inside the top-20 in the NFL in the past three seasons. Or even Jeff Fitzgerald, who is the linebackers coach of a unit that's been disappointing at most.
Those changes could be coming. According to The Cincinnati Enquirer's Joe Reedy, former Minnesota Vikings head coach Brad Childress was in town Thursday night to have dinner with Bengals head coach Marvin Lewis. Childress was also the Philadelphia Eagles offensive coordinator from 2003-2005 and the quarterbacks coach from 1999-2002.
Now the obvious thing to do is to get pumped, go out on the snow covered roads in Cincinnati do 50 donuts.
However, Reedy (rightly so) advises a level of calm before getting too excited as the prospects that Cincinnati could be looking at available offensive coordinators.
Or for all we know it could be two friends having dinner in weather conditions that resembled the Twin Cities. Childress and Lewis were part of the USO/NFL Tour this past summer and it could merely be one friend asking another for advice.
This also wouldn’t be the first time that everyone has gotten caught up in rumors of offensive coordinator Bob Bratkowski’s demise only to see him return. Two years ago there were rumors that Hue Jackson was a candidate to become offensive coordinator here only to see him stay in Baltimore for another year.
However, WCPO's Dennis Janson writes that the meeting, which "was far from" clandestine, including Lewis introducing Chilly to "some local acquaintances who also happened to be dining."
Mothership captain Geoff Hobson writes that the two were going "over Xs and Os as well as dinner."