There are some around the football world that believe Cincinnati Bengals head coach Marvin Lewis should have been shown the door following his team’s epic meltdown against the Pittsburgh Steelers in the playoffs.
There are others who think he should have been fired long before that.
The second-longest tenured head coach in the NFL, Lewis has led Cincinnati to the playoffs in each of the past five seasons. It’s in the postseason that his teams have struggled under his watch. Cincinnati has not won a playoff game in seven attempts with Lewis manning the sidelines.
Once Cincinnati became a regular participant in the postseason, the expectations moved from actually earning a playoff spot to going deep into the playoffs. While that’s a far cry for where the Bengals were prior to Lewis’ arrival, it’s the reality of the situation today.
In this, Bengals Owner Mike Brown seems rather non-committal to Lewis’ future beyond the 2016 season:
“It’s a process. We seem to go through our own dance. But I commend Marvin’s achievements. He’s done remarkably well with our football team here, in recent years especially,” Brown said, via Cincinnati.com. “I respect him. I like him personally. He’s going to be our coach this year. That’s in the bank. Where it goes, we’ll see how it plays out.”
Heading into the final year of his deal, it appears that Lewis will be a lame-duck head coach during the 2016 campaign.
Not only is this going to lead to increased pressure for the head coach, it could potentially lead to his ousting in Cincinnati should the team not go deep into the playoffs this upcoming season.