Marvin Lewis Number 1 failure

[Shake n Blake]

(10-07-2016, 12:44 PM)fredtoast Wrote: From what I can see it is not just one single thing.  Personally I don't think that coaching in the postseason is that much different than coaching in the regular season.  Pretty much the best regular season coaches are also the best post season coaches.  Marvin is an anomaly.  If there really was some super secret to being a better post season coach than regular season coach then I think we would see a lot more examples of coaches like Marvin who have strikingly different records in the post season than in the regular season.  

Most of his career Marvin has not had the talent to win championships.  His '05 team had an elite offense but did not have the defense to win a championship.  

'05 team was destroyed by injury and suspension in just two seasons.  By '08 ..... Braham-gone, Pollack-gone, Thurman-gone, Henry-gone, Deltha Oneal-gone, Rudi-gone, Levi Jones-never returned to pre-injury level,  Willie Anderson-never returned to pre-injury form.  Plus they lost Justin Smith and Eric Steinbach to free-agency.

'09 team was smoke an mirrors.  Marvin did a great job getting 10 wins out of a team with so little talent, but when Chris Henry was lost to injury our entire passing game collapsed and the offense crashed.  But Marvin brought back the unbalanced line (mainly because 3 of his starters were undrafted free agents with just 6 total NFL starts), and got some decent production form cheap cast offs (Benson, Dhani Jones, Tank Johnson).  Plus Mike Zimmer arrived and fixed our defense.  Marvin was hired as a defensive guru, but he never had a good defense until Zimmer arrived.  However by the end of the year that team was running on fumes.  Over their last 5 games they were 1-4 and outscored 65-118.  They were 2.5 point favorites in the playoff game, but that team really didn't have the talent to win a playoff game against a team that both the #1 defense in the league and the #1 rushing game.

'10 was a dumpster fire.  Because of all the drama and magic surrounding the '09 team (multiple come-from-behind last minute wins, the Vicki Zimmer game, the Chris Henry game) many people did not realize how deeply flawed they were.  TO was seen as the missing piece for a Super Bowl contender.  Then the wheels fell off.  I really can not argue with anyone who called for Marvin to be fired after the '10 season.  At that point he had had 8 years and he did not look close to winning a championship.

However, even though many experts claimed we wopuld be the worst team in the league in '11 Marvin made the playoffs with a rookie starting QB.  But the Bengals were 4 point underdogs on the road in both the '11 and '12 playoffs.

'13 was the first time that the Bengals were favored to win a playoff game and they laid a big egg at home.  I was there and as disgusted as everyone else, but at that point the Bengals were winning against good teams during the regular season.  I really felt that we had what it took to beat good teams in the playoffs.  

'14 team was destroyed by injury.

'15 team was missing starting QB but lost in a melt down.

Marvin is obviously not an elite NFL, coach but he does not deserve much of the criticism he gets around here for certain issues.  He struggles a bit with clock management, but that has never cost us a game.  He is criticized for not "making adjustments", but the numbers show that his teams do well in the third quarter and come form behind to win more than most other teams.  He gets criticized for being too conservative with a lead, but again the numbers show that he is about league average when it comes to running the ball with a lead int he second half.  In fact one loss I blame on coaching was against Tampa Bay in '10 when the Bengals threw the ball when they should not have.  He gets criticized for using time out  early but I see other teams do that all the time.  

But the criticism for his sideline demeanor and press conferences is just ridiculous.  In fact it proves my point that many people here have a personal hatred for Marvin more because of his personality than how he coaches.  Personally I don't care about a coaches demeanor as long as he is not embarrassing the team.  Screaming and yelling is not as effective as many people here think.  It might work with high school kids, but you don't win at the NFL based on your ability to scream.

So I think Marvin does not have one big weakness.  Instead it is a lot of little things.  

Finally I think too many people around here give coaching all the blame and credit for everything, but in fact, except for a couple of rare exceptions pretty much every coach has an up and down career that include winning seasons and losing seasons.  Marvin has not had "the most talented roster in the league" like some people claim.  The players who vote for the top 100 players do not agree.  the fans who vote for the pro Bowl do not agree.  The media members who pick the All-pro teams do not agree.  In fact the only people making that claim are usually trying to make up a reason to blame Marvin.

In summary, you don't think Marv has any major flaws and you have an excuse for 90% of his failures. At what point does the prime-time and playoff records become "not a coincidence"? This is Marv's 14th season and we have a mountain of evidence that involves 2 talented cores of players.

At what point do you stop making excuses (quality of opponent, not enough talent, etc) and start thinking maybe the problem is Marv and/or some of the more tenured coaches? Btw, if the team has lacked talent (you mention 05 and 09 specifically), then how did they win 21 games and division titles in those seasons? Does talent level only become evident in post season? We should've beaten the Sanchize Jets at home for sure. We were winning at half against the Steelers and Kitna came out hot, but per usual for the playoffs, we came out flat in the 2nd half.

Hell, then you got 5 more games after that. That's just playoffs. Not even touching on the prime time record. I could see excusing a couple games, but 7? At some point you have to stop picking out excuses for each individual game and start looking at the whole picture. 7 playoff games is plenty of evidence.