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I_C_Deadpeople Hall Of Fame

I_C_Deadpeople

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Article on the Athletic, quite interesting.

 

Note the comments about Ferrari's  and once again it says Mikey does not care about the money...that just means then he is a complete imbecile. If he does not care about the money but can't see what it actually takes to build a winner, just a dumb  stubborn moron.

 

 

 

Editor’s note: Throughout the NFL season, The Athletic is telling the stories of Black coaches who have been identified as having the qualities and potential to become head coaches. To read the profiles of other candidates, click here.

Marvin Lewis stepped onto the team bus at Heinz Field after a 16-13 loss to the Stealers. For all their effort, the Bengals were a 6-10 team in 2018.

He took his seat next to team owner Mike Brown, as he had after every game for 16 seasons.

There wasn’t much conversation. There usually wasn’t after games, win or lose.

“We just didn’t have enough firepower,” Brown said to him.

That was it.

The Bengals had been 5-3 at the bye, then fell apart in the second half as wide receiver A.J. Green missed seven games and quarterback Andy Dalton sat out five.

On the plane, Lewis and Brown sat next to one another, like always, mostly in silence. When they got back to their cars, Brown said, “I’ll see you in the morning.”

Lewis went to Brown’s office Monday morning like he always did, and Brown got right to it.

Brown: “I’m sorry we have to do this. You are my friend and I appreciate everything.”

Lewis: “I appreciate everything you did too. It is what it is.”

The team called it a “mutual” decision, not a firing.

Lewis didn’t volunteer to give up his job, but he understood.

An NFL head coach doesn’t get fired in a day. A firing builds decision by decision, fumble by fumble, penalty by penalty, loss by loss, often year by year.

He and Brown had talked about the possibility over the last couple of weeks.

As far back as January 2016, Lewis and Brown agreed Lewis would step down after the 2017 season. Hue Jackson, then the offensive coordinator, was chosen to succeed him. Jackson eventually backed out of the deal and became head coach of the Browns.

Lewis remained for another two years, giving him 16 years on the job.

Sixteen years.

In the time that passed before Brown replaced Lewis, most households replaced all major appliances, hot water heaters, furnaces and air conditioners.

Five days before Lewis was hired, Apple launched a new way to purchase music called iTunes. “Finding Nemo” was released during his first offseason workouts. In Lewis’ first year as coach of the Bengals, Sean McVay was playing high school football.

In 16 years, Lewis had signed seven contract extensions by his recollection. Or was it eight?

Lewis cleaned out his office and was gone by early afternoon.

Calls kept coming all day, including one from a representative of an NFL team looking for a head coach. The team wanted to meet with him. He thought about it, went back and forth. Finally, he told them he couldn’t.

Lewis needed time to understand where he had been, and time to figure out where he wanted to go.

When the Bengals clinched the AFC North for the first time in 15 years with a victory over the Lions in 2005, Carson Palmer and Jon Kitna poured a jug of Gatorade on their coach, as custom would have it.

Lewis turned and glared at his quarterbacks.

“It was like we won the Super Bowl,” he says. “That was not what it’s about. It was just one step to help us get there.”

Lewis was well prepared to change the culture of a family-owned team when he took over in 2003. He had worked in Pittsburgh for Bill Cowher, who had done it, and he had worked in Baltimore for Brian Billick, who had done it.

As the coordinator for the world champion Ravens in 2000, Lewis had presided over one of the most dominant defenses in history. He had helped players like Kevin Greene, Ray Lewis, Greg Lloyd and Rod Woodson reach peak performance levels.

In his first year in Cincinnati, he told his players the team motto was “Do your job.” The motto later became famous when Bill Belichick used it to help build a dynasty.

What Belichick did that Lewis did not was win enough big games. The Bengals were 9-32 in prime time under Lewis. Of more significance, they were 0-7 in the postseason.

In Lewis’ first playoff game, Palmer was sent to the hospital on his first pass. That was one of three postseason games in which the Bengals had to rely on a backup quarterback. Dalton threw three interceptions in one of the playoff losses. They went 0-for-9 in third-down conversion attempts in another. And in the one that stings most, running back Jeremy Hill lost a fumble with a one-point lead and less than a minute remaining. Then, Adam Jones was penalized 15 yards for mixing it up with Stealers assistant coach Joey Porter, setting up an easy winning field goal for Pittsburgh.

“It was a string of things, any one of which could have gone the other way but didn’t,” Brown says. “All of that ended up meaning we didn’t win in the playoffs, but it wasn’t that we weren’t a good team in the playoffs. We were. Things just happened, and it was unfortunate. It wasn’t anything that related to Marvin.”

Lewis may have failed to win a playoff game, but what he accomplished was remarkable. He transformed an organization, essentially bringing the Bengals from dial-up to 5G.

“He never got the credit,” says NFL Network analyst and former general manager Charlie Casserly, who served with Lewis on the competition committee. “He beat Baltimore and Pittsburgh, two Super Bowl-winning franchises who had a reputation for being competitive every year. He won division championships. He did what had not been done in Cincinnati.”

The seven playoff berths in Lewis’ tenure were as many as the Bengals had in their other 36 years of existence. In his 16 seasons, the Bengals had a .518 winning percentage. In the previous 16 seasons, they had a .345 winning percentage.

There were reasons the Bengals struggled before Lewis, and he was faced with some unique challenges.

“He’s a really good coach,” says Vikings coach Mike Zimmer, who was Lewis’ defensive coordinator for six years in Cincinnati. “He’s terrific with the players. He’s terrific with the community. He’s very good with the personnel, tremendous as far as bringing guys in and being able to handle different personalities. He could be tough on them, but lenient as well, depending on what’s needed at the time.”

Lewis was the kind of head coach who gave a player a game ball after his wife delivered a baby.

“Players felt they could talk to him,” Brown says. “He was good at selecting assistant coaches and he gave them proper leeway. He supervised them, if you will, and got the best out of them. He was an exceptional leader in the community, and the players saw that, respected it and emulated it.”

 

Lewis considers Brown a father or uncle figure. Brown talks of Lewis as a “wonderful friend.”

Brown is sitting at his desk at Paul Brown Stadium, talking about Lewis. And in his mind, he can see Lewis sitting across from him, as he did every morning for 16 years.

Much of what Lewis was able to achieve as the head coach of the Bengals, and much of what he failed to achieve, can be traced back to the time he spent sitting across from Brown in that office.

In 2001, Lewis interviewed with Bills general manager Tom Donahoe for Buffalo’s head coaching vacancy. Donahoe left him with a suggestion he never forgot: Communicate with the team owner every day.

Brown and Lewis talked for 10 minutes some days, 40 minutes on others. They even spoke on the phone when Lewis went on his regular offseason vacations to Greece.

Whatever was happening with the team was the primary subject of most conversations. Brown loved talking about players. The day after a game, they watched the game tape together. Sometimes they discussed league issues. Other times, Brown told stories about his father, the legendary Paul Brown.

But the Bengals still were Brown’s team. When Brown and Lewis disagreed on something, Brown would tell him, “I have two votes in this meeting, and you have one.”

What Lewis realized is he needed to make sure Brown understood his positions, whatever it took.

“You couldn’t go in and say you have to do it this way,” Lewis says. “It wasn’t going to happen in 10 minutes. It was going to take some time. He would think about it and maybe call me in an hour and ask to come talk about it again. He might say, ‘Let me decide this one.’ But it was important that when we came out of those meetings, it was this is the way we are going to do it as the Cincinnati Bengals.”

“I would try to accommodate things,” Brown says. “Sometimes he would educate me about things. I don’t think we ever had a problem we couldn’t work through. I don’t think I imposed on him in a hard way. I tried to support him with the things he asked.”

Generally, Brown wanted a lineup of Ferraris whereas Lewis preferred players who looked like they could have been manufactured by Caterpillar. “I thought you had to be a man to play in the AFC North,” Lewis says. “So that’s the side I was going to be on.”

They did not have significant differences of opinions often, according to both men. Lewis recalls two. He objected when Brown insisted on cutting running back Kenny Watson in 2009. And Brown refused to go along when Lewis wanted to make a change in his coaching staff.

“Sometimes we wouldn’t agree, and sometimes he would let me know pretty forcibly how he felt about it,” Brown says. “But we never got the point where we held it against each other.”

Lewis never questioned Brown was coming from the right place. “That team is his life,” he says. “He doesn’t care about money. He wants all the money to be spent on that team and the players. It’s not going to be wasted on things outside of that. Everything is directed to making the team better. He takes care of the people in that building.”

Brown acquiesced to Lewis on a number of big-ticket requests, including hiring a full-time chef, remodeling the cafeteria and overhauling the weight room. He also granted Lewis’ wish to have the team stay at a hotel the night before home games, which the Bengals had not done previously.

Lewis never persuaded Brown to build an indoor practice facility, but Lewis didn’t think having an indoor field was as important as it was sometimes portrayed.

They still talk on occasion, maybe about draft prospects or catching up about one of their guys.

After the 2018 season, however, it was time. “The public was mad at him, mad at me, mad at the world here,” Brown says. “I did what I felt I had to do, but with great, great regret. It was very hard for me. But I would recommend him as highly as possible. … He’s a very fine coach and deserving of consideration to coach in the league. He was excellent here.”

Says Lewis, “You are hired to win the Super Bowl. We didn’t get to where we were supposed to get to.”

In November of his final season as coach of the Bengals, Lewis fired defensive coordinator Teryl Austin and assumed his responsibilities.

That meant putting together defensive game plans, scripting practices and calling defenses. Adding all of it to his head-coaching responsibilities made for a nearly impossible workload. He was in the office before 6 a.m. and home after midnight, but still not finished working.

Sometimes, after arriving home, he would sip Tito’s on the rocks and draw up a practice plan for the day after the next one.

“By the end of the year, I was really, really tired, just worn out,” he says.

After being let go, he wasn’t sure what was coming next except boxes, bubble wrap and moving vans. He and his wife, Peggy, quickly sold their house in Indian Hill, Ohio, where they had lived for his entire 16-year run.

They had another home waiting. Their daughter, Whitney, went to Arizona State and settled in the Phoenix area. When Marvin and Peggy visited her to help find a venue for her wedding in 2012, they decided they wanted to grow old there and purchased a home in North Scottsdale.

In Arizona, Lewis began to understand the joys of being a grandfather. He already had been a grandfather to Grayson, now 4, and Camden, who will be 2 in November. But he had been a grandfather who was 1,800 miles away. Suddenly, he was a grandfather who was 10 minutes away. That meant two or three visits a week, pool time, golf cart rides, hot dogs and ice cream.

The kids call Peggy “Lolli” and they call him “Pop.”

One of the many gifts from a giggling child is perspective.

His old friend Zimmer called, asking if Lewis would be interested in helping him on Vikings game days as an extra set of eyes. Lewis liked being in Arizona and didn’t want to get on a plane every week. He said no thanks.

Golfing? Now that’s what he wanted to do. He played 13 days in a row. He took two days off, then played another nine days straight.

It was fine for the four hours or so he was on the course. Then he had the rest of the day to fill. “I realized I didn’t like golf as much as I thought I did,” he says.

He had some media opportunities. He met with ESPN and CBS. The Alliance of American Football hired him to be a color commentator for its startup season.

Herm Edwards, another old friend, was just up the road coaching at Arizona State. They shared an agent for years and used to jog together before their knees began objecting.

Edwards touched base a couple of times in the winter and told Lewis to talk to him when he was ready to get back in coaching. In May of last year, Lewis was ready.

“You realize how much you miss coaching when you can’t coach,” he says.

 

For 38 years, all he had known was the coach’s life.

The mundane coach’s life.

The glorious coach’s life.

The torturous coach’s life.

The deeply satisfying coach’s life.

Lewis was hired as a special advisor to Edwards. By NCAA rule, he couldn’t coach players, but he was back in the game. He still had time for grandkids and golf, and he had a canvas for his art.

Perfect.

After the season, the Cowboys and the Washington Football Team interviewed him for their head-coaching vacancies. Lewis knew Cowboys executive vice president Stephen Jones well from their time together on the competition committee. He knew Washington owner Dan Snyder from his one year as his assistant head coach and defensive coordinator.

Neither offered him a job. Lewis had been through that drill before. Before he landed in Cincinnati, he interviewed for head coaching positions with the Patriots, Panthers, Browns, Bills and Buccaneers.

Zimmer called again, asking if he was interested in helping to oversee the defense.

But Edwards needed help, too. His defensive coordinator, Danny Gonzalez, was hired to coach New Mexico. Gonzalez’s replacement, Tony White, decided to leave for Syracuse on signing day.

Edwards asked Lewis to serve as co-defensive coordinator with Antonio Pierce, a young coach who played for Lewis 18 years ago. Lewis agreed.

Lewis has been invigorated working with Pierce and other young coaches on the staff, including his son, Marcus, a defensive analyst, but because of COVID-19-related delays and cancellations, the Sun Devils have played only one game.

Still, he also has been invigorated by coaching players who aren’t old enough to legally drink beer. “They’re all ears,” Lewis says. “That’s the best part of it. Over time, now you get compensated a little bit for your time spent. You get treated with some reverence.”

One of the things about a football team is you get treated how you deserve to be treated.

Edwards sometimes stops by Lewis’ office and goes over his long list of things to do. Often, nothing on the list pertains the football.

Lewis smiles that big smile. He is enjoying being an assistant coach the way a former governor enjoys being a consultant.

These are things Lewis did not get into coaching for:

  • Three television shows and two radio shows
  • Deliberating how meeting rooms should be arranged
  • CBA compliance
  • Interpreting MRI results
  • Salary-cap calculations
  • Standing/kneeling debates
  • Determining what kinds of socks players can wear to practice
  • Shaking hands with sponsors

“A head coach is in charge of an organization,” says Falcons offensive coordinator Dirk Koetter, a close friend of Lewis’ for more than 40 years. “It can wear you down a little. It’s not all the stuff you got into it for. When you are a head coach for as long as Marvin was, you’re doing a lot of other stuff besides coaching the players. Now he’s gotten back to coaching and teaching.”

Lewis tries to help players be the best they can be and searches for vulnerabilities in opponents. He motivates, collaborates and evaluates.

It’s like he’s back at Long Beach State, going over a pursuit angle with a linebacker. Or back in Baltimore, figuring out how to overload the right side without compromising the shell behind it.

It’s all ball.

In the offseason, he exchanged ideas about trends with other coaches, including Belichick, whose team had 36 takeaways last season, second most in the NFL.

If Lewis gets another chance to be a head coach, he’d like his job to be more about football and less about the other things. The way he envisions it, he could help himself to that end by hiring the right kinds of assistants, a blend of leaders, teachers and strategists. Maybe he will have an assistant head coach who is an actual assistant head coach.

Lewis would want to be a developer of coaches. He feels an obligation to the profession, to his fellow coaches and to minorities.

“One of the things I didn’t do enough before was give guys opportunities to grow,” he says. “I had a coach come to me once and ask if another coach could call plays during the second half of a preseason game. I said no. I didn’t want to give the players a feeling that this isn’t as important now. Maybe that was the wrong way to look at it.”

As time goes by, whatever is gained in wisdom is lost in opportunities to apply it. Lewis is 61, and the football seasons pass more quickly than before.

“I don’t have as much patience as I once did,” he says. “Having been through all the wars I’ve been through, you see things differently. You know the urgency of it.”

He is not about getting a team above .500 or making it to the playoffs.

Greatness is his goal — achieving it and sustaining it.

“You learn,” he says, “that you have to be demanding.”

Lewis could be content continuing to do what he’s doing.

The youth around him has relit a flame within. Arizona State treats him like royalty. If he could live anywhere, it would be where he’s living.

But if he has his choice, he will be an NFL head coach again.

Marvin Lewis has it figured out now.

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BengalFanInTO Super Bowl Champ

BengalFanInTO

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Thanks for sharing the article. I think the biggest thing Marvin did here was get Mike Brown to spend money on important things outside of player salaries. In the 90's, the Bengals were absolutely known as the cheapskates of the league. Lewis helped change this. He did help change the culture and obviously helped the Bengals move away from laughingstock status. But he couldn't win big games. He choked. He seems like a good dude but he needed to go.

 

The biggest thing he could never get Brown to do was hire a GM and a proper scouting staff (not even sure if he tried). This has been, and remains, the biggest issue on this team. As the article points out, Brown was and still is ultimately making player decisions and that is the problem with this team. 

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claptonrocks Hall Of Fame

claptonrocks

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Marvin said he liked Ferraris...

Paul liked work horses..

Mike likes skilled players to the point it clouds his reasoning building a team..

He drools at wide receivers and cornerbacks..

He did have much love for Burfect though..

He said Burfect was "a helluva football player"..

Katy is changing that now..

 

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Sea Ray Pro Bowler

Sea Ray

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8 minutes ago, claptonrocks said:

Marvin said he liked Ferraris...

Paul liked work horses..

Mike likes skilled players to the point it clouds his reasoning building a team..

He drools at wide receivers and cornerbacks..

Katy seems to see it differently..

 

 

Nope, it was the other way around. Mike Brown liked the Ferraris:

Quote

Generally, Brown wanted a lineup of Ferraris whereas Lewis preferred players who looked like they could have been manufactured by Caterpillar.

 

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claptonrocks Hall Of Fame

claptonrocks

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4 minutes ago, Sea Ray said:

I think it's mainly Duke Tobin making player decisions although I realize MB has the final say. Duke needs more people to search for talent. It's him and the Brown family doing the scouting. That's not good

No not good at all..

Ir would be crazy to think they dont 

use scouts but just rely on senior bowl, combine and watching some tape on the kid..

 

 

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Sea Ray Pro Bowler

Sea Ray

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Quote

 

These are things Lewis did not get into coaching for:

  • Three television shows and two radio shows

 

 

This was obvious. Marvin could have at least pretended to like doing tv shows. He was blatantly obstinate in those last few yrs doing the Bengals weekly show

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I_C_Deadpeople Hall Of Fame

I_C_Deadpeople

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15 minutes ago, claptonrocks said:

No not good at all..

Ir would be crazy to think they dont 

use scouts but just rely on senior bowl, combine and watching some tape on the kid..

 

 

 

Mike Brown is just a walking talking paradox - wants to win and says it is not about the money but won't add scouts because it costs money. 

 

He HAS to know his scouting/office staff is 1/3 the normal NFL size, he would see it on the other teams. Yet he won't do the same thing knowing full well it is what creates a successful roster. The guy is simply in No Mans Land. 

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claptonrocks Hall Of Fame

claptonrocks

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2 minutes ago, I_C_Deadpeople said:

You said this:

 

Marvin said he liked Ferraris

 

Which could mean Marvin said he himself like them or it could mean Marvin was referring to MB liking them. 

I did horrible at wording that..

I was conveying what Marvin saud about Mike..

My Bad lol..

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spicoli Hall Of Fame

spicoli

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25 minutes ago, I_C_Deadpeople said:

Mike Brown is just a walking talking paradox - wants to win and says it is not about the money but won't add scouts because it costs money. 

 

It's not about money, it's about his dad. His dad believed that the coaches were the ones that should be scouting the players that they were going to be working with, not some scout that had no say in the gameplans. That was the Paul Brown philosophy towards roster building and Mike just stuck with it. 

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I_C_Deadpeople Hall Of Fame

I_C_Deadpeople

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10 minutes ago, spicoli said:

 

It's not about money, it's about his dad. His dad believed that the coaches were the ones that should be scouting the players that they were going to be working with, not some scout that had no say in the gameplans. That was the Paul Brown philosophy towards roster building and Mike just stuck with it. 

Because times never change? LOL. I am sure most teams did what Paul Brown did back in the day, but the scouting and coaching game has changed and MB stays in the stone age. 

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spicoli Hall Of Fame

spicoli

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On 11/16/2020 at 8:20 AM, UncleEarl said:

 

Or possibly, that psycho ruins every QB he gets his hands on.  Kaepernick looked like Mahomes when he started, but we watched his play decline under Harbaugh.  The guy is not right in the head and his days as a relevant coach are over.

 

 

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Cat Super Bowl Champ

Cat

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16 hours ago, spicoli said:

 

It's not about money, it's about his dad. His dad believed that the coaches were the ones that should be scouting the players that they were going to be working with, not some scout that had no say in the gameplans. That was the Paul Brown philosophy towards roster building and Mike just stuck with it. 

I absolutely believe this. He wants to do it his dad's way in every aspect, no matter what.

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