Bengals Did Improve To 7-9 and 7-7 with Lasor

[*ochocincos*]

Win-loss record should not indicative of how good/bad a coordinator is necessarily.
Heck, the Patriots ended up going to the Super Bowl some time ago with one of the worst ranked defenses in the NFL.
Just because they had a really good record and went to the Super Bowl, does that mean the defense (including the coordinator) doesn't need to be improved? I'd say no. There's clearly room for improvement.

I apply the same philosophy to the Bengals in this case. Yes, the Bengals went 7-7 with Lazor as OC.
However, they were still one of the worst offensive teams in the league during that span.
It wasn't until injuries happened and the Bengals started being forced to use some of their depth players that many of us have clamored for them to use did the offense (and defense) start making improvements in certain areas.

Since we're talking about the offense in this thread, Dalton had five games with 154 or fewer passing yards (MIN, CHI, DEN, JAX, PIT #1).
Only one game higher than 300 yards, which was against Buffalo.
And even after Lazor took over as OC, there still were far too many passes (and screens/slants specifically) to Brandon LaFell that resulted in very little, zero, and even sometimes negative yards.
And they still really struggle in the second half of games.
How much is Lazor's fault vs Marvin's is something we'll never know, but I'm inclined to think both.

The offensive improvement really has just been the running game, and it's primarily seen improvement with a change in OL players, especially the last two weeks.
I've always thought that Dalton is good enough to help win games if he has a strong running game. And this team has good enough RBs to be able to do well with a quality run-blocking OL. Add a couple new OL in the offseason that excel at run blocking and I think this offense could be vastly improved.

If the Bengals are to keep Lazor as OC, they need to do the above as well as get WRs that are better at getting YAC. That's assuming Lazor sticks with his short passing game, but that might have just been implemented by him this year out of necessity due to such piss poor OL performance.