The cowardly Mike Brown and his status quo Bengals

It wasn’t the news we had hoped for.

Marvin Lewis, the winningest head coach in franchise history, will continue coaching the Cincinnati Bengals into his 16th and 17th seasons. After an absence of updates on Monday and for most of the sunlit hours on Tuesday, the team announced a two-year agreement Lewis to remain as the team’s head coach.

Predictable. Cowardly. Incompetent.

Cincinnati is in desperate need for a change. We’ve been seeing it for years. The team-friendly media has seen it. Contemporaries around the league have seen it. Coming off two losing seasons and 15 years without a postseason win (and dozens of embarrassing primetime performances), the Bengals had a golden opportunity to move in a new direction.

We could have used:

• A new voice and face for the franchise to build around.
• A head coach and coaching staff tasked with coaching up their players, not tossing them aside like John Ross, or the talented youth stuck behind aging veterans.
• And we’re not even digging into the clock management issues, or use of timeouts because a player didn’t realize he was part of a specific scheme or package, leaving ten men on the field.

Cincinnati got none of that.

Why are we surprised by the cowardly Mike Brown, whose chickenshit outlook on team economics and incompetency, went in this direction? He did it with Bruce Coslet and again with Dick LeBeau. He favored Hue Jackson and Jay Gruden, both former Bengals offensive coordinators, before settling on Lewis.

“One person in the Bengals organization thinks Mike Brown is afraid to have to search for a new coach because that person might want to change too many things in the organization,” NFL reporter Jason Cole wrote via Twitter.

Lewis will always be remembered for making the Bengals suck less. If the Bengals had a ring of honor, he’d be there. However, the Bengals don’t have a ring of honor because the owner lacks the financial fortitude to honor team legends on a permanent basis.

More of the same.

Well, except for Paul Guenther.

A recap:

• On Dec. 17, ESPN NFL Insider Adam Schefter explosively reported that Marvin Lewis “is planning to leave the Bengals after this season”. NFL Network reporter Ian Rapoport indirectly confirmed the report, adding that “when I discussed his future” on Dec. 16, Lewis told him that being a General Manager is “something I would listen to.”
• During the postgame press conference later that afternoon, Marvin Lewis blew off questions asking for a response.

“It’s the same report you guys have been reporting on all season,” Lewis said. “Nothing’s changed since August. It’s just a speculation people keep throwing out there."

• Yea, Bullshit. Schefter and Rapoport are highly respected journalists in the industry; they’re not creating clickbait stories to generate pageviews or ratings. If Lewis wasn’t the one chirping to the national media, then someone close to him was. And let’s be honest... Lewis is an intelligent man, initiating the conversation (though not any demands) through the national media is how you get Mike Brown’s attention.
• Since Cincinnati’s 31-27 win over the Ravens, Lewis has softened his tone about leaving, even inviting the idea that he could return in 2018. This has caused a panicked belief that Lewis will return after management capitulates to a variety of his demands. Whatever they might be.