Marvin Lewis is either really clueless or a bad liar

The Cincinnati Bengals are a mess, and they look like a team ready for the season to end.

With a shot at the playoffs still technically in the cards — not to mention a winning season if they won out — the Bengals looked ready to quit in Week 14, as they were destroyed by the lowly Chicago Bears, 33-7.

Mind you, this is a Bears team that didn’t score 30 points once this season, and they actually scored less than 20 points in nine games, including five of their last six coming into Sunday.

Chicago also ranked near the bottom in most offensive categories, but they managed to gain 482 total yards and 29 first downs in their beatdown of Cincinnati. They also punted the ball just three times as their offense had their way with the Bengals.

As for the Bengals’ offense, they scored a mere seven points, which was their second-lowest output of the season, and their worst since Week 1 when Ken Zampese was still running the offense.

This was an embarrassment, and anyone who watched it could see the Bengals were disinterested, unfocused and ready for the season to be over.

But don’t tell Marvin Lewis that. He thinks the Bengals had plenty of effort, but they just didn’t execute.

“I think the effort, you know, I don’t say there’s anything wrong with the effort,” he said. “Our ability to complete the task, we didn’t get done.”

That’s simply an absurd thing to say after what we just witnessed. It looks even dumber after seeing his quarterback admit the effort wasn’t there.

“I’m at a loss of words today,” Lewis added. “Our football team, I thought, had a good week of preparation and we did not play close to the kind of football to win the football game today we needed to. I don’t know, that we hurt ourselves early on with penalties and errors and that we shouldn’t have, from the kicking game right away, our failure to capitalize on things offensively, and to get stops on defense. I know we had a lot of new guys and different guys, but that’s no excuse. We didn’t play well enough today.”

Either Lewis is completely clueless to what’s transpiring in front of his very eyes, or he’s just an awful liar who won’t admit the truth publicly.

After 15 years of this, there’s no telling which it is, or if it’s both.

One thing is clear: Lewis’ time in Cincinnati should be coming to an end very soon.

It doesn’t get any simpler than that.