Marvin Lewis has been the head coach for the Cincinnati Bengals for 12 years now, which is the longest active tenure for an NFL head coach with one team. While he has helped lead his team to several winning seasons and division championships, the Bengals have yet to win a playoff game under his reign. Has this gone on for too long? Should the Bengals have said goodbye to Lewis after losing yet again in their first game of the playoffs this year?
Lewis has an overall record of 100-92 in his tenure with the Bengals, and he has done wonders for a team that before then had some pretty terrible years. I am in no way saying that Lewis doesn’t deserve to be a head coach. He’s certainly proven himself over the years. I just think there’s something not clicking with this particular team and organization, especially in the playoffs. There’s no way the Bengals shouldn’t have at least an AFC Championship appearance under their belt in the last few years.
We all saw what happened to John Fox and the Denver Broncos. He was only with the team for four years and led them to a playoff berth in each of them. In fact, he led his team to the Super Bowl just a year ago, and the Broncos still decided to part ways with him after failing to win their first game in the playoffs last year. That is a sign of a team wanting nothing else but to win a Super Bowl and doing anything possible to get there — even if it means firing a coach with a reputation like Fox who’s led them to major success over the past few years.
The loyalty in this Bengals organization seems to run deep. This could be a good thing for team stability purposes, but the goal here is to ultimately win a Super Bowl. In my opinion, Lewis has received his fair share of time to achieve this goal and simply hasn’t been able to do it. Sometimes you need to take risks in order to gain rewards, and the Bengals don’t seem to want to do that.
I guess we will just wait and see how this pans out and if keeping Lewis around turns out to be beneficial to the team. In my opinion, if the Bengals don’t bring a Lombardi trophy back to Cincinnati in 2015, it’s time to finally say goodbye to coach Lewis.
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