The “New Beginning” Arrives for Marvin Lewis & the Bengals

Given the history of this franchise over the past 20 years, you’d have to expect that there would be naysayers, skeptics, and cynics – even from within the team’s own fan base. Negative experience just naturally breeds negative expectations and attitudes. Thankfully, the current roster of players seems determined to succeed in spite of the most recent intensification of negativism and lowering of expectations created by the retirement of Carson Palmer and the recent departures of Jonathan Joseph and Chad Ochocinco. Bengals owner, Mike Brown, has long given fans reasons to sour on the team. His personality does little to generate excitement. Few people took him seriously back on January 4th  when, during his press conference with Marvin Lewis to announce the extension of Lewis’ contract as head coach, Brown stated that

"“We had good discussions over the past two days, and I think we cleared alot of air about things that needed to be better understood by each side. There’ll be some changes made as we go forward here. There’ll be changes made with playing personnel. There’ll be changes considered with coaches. We’ll examine how they all fit and make decisions after we’ve had an opportunity to consider that more.I think this gives us our best shot going forward, to be the team we want to be. We’ve had a difficult year. We know the dissatisfaction. We’re unhappy with ourselves. People are unhappy with us. We are not far off. We are close to being the kind of team we can be.”"

Likewise, many people might not have taken Lewis seriously when he said at that same press conference:

"“I’m excited about the ability to continue and take the team where I want to take it.”"

Or when he characterized his approach to 2011 as “a new beginning.”

"“As I said the other night after the season in the press conference, I do feel like it’s a new beginning.”"

In retrospect,  I believe that the seeds for understanding what I mentioned in a previous article on the rejuvenation of Marvin Lewis as a man who has “rediscovered the joy of coming to work” can be found in this press conference.

On the one hand, Lewis said he was “not happy with where we are.” He also, of course, said that “It’s not finished. I came here to do a certain thing, and we’re not done.”  Each year when the players walk out of this building, and just speaking with them and hearing from them all night, we have the nucleus of the right guys. We need to add to it and we will.”

On the other hand, while acknowledging the presence of that “nucleus of the right guys,” Lewis also said that that “I wouldn’t be sitting here if I wasn’t satisfied with where we are moving forward.” He knew, from his conversations with Brown, then that major changes were looming, and that he would be able make the changes necessary toward crafting the kind of team that he wanted to build.

When asked about the nature of those changes, he  would only say that

"“We’re going to be better. I don’t think we want to go any further than that here today. I think that gets to be personal and private.”"

Though we can only speculate on the changes that he intended, at that time, to make, we can assume that those changes involved bringing in guys whose make-up would fit with his “core nucleus” of players. That would mean bringing in guys who not only had the talent to play the game at its highest level, but also who would dedicate themselves to the game full-time as well as to winning. He was probably more worried about bringing in people who would strengthen the identity and unity of the team than he was about bringing in individual “stars.”

Assembling those pieces to strengthen the core nucleus of players already here would, of course, be delayed by the NFL lockout. The lockout also delayed the process of eliminating from the roster any players who didn’t fit with Lewis’ holistic vision or team concept. I think it’s clear that Lewis wants a team whose identity begins and ends with results on the field. Now that the lockout is over, I think we need to read all of the changes made to the Bengals roster in this light.