Whole Lotta Change

[Bengal Dude]

(03-25-2020, 09:07 PM)Benton Wrote: So, I've been quarantined for the last two weeks and reading a lot of the signings. (Sidenote: I'm friggin excited).

But I had a thought: maybe Mike wasnt the reason we were so darn cheap. Maybe it was... Marvin.

I get the obvious question: why would any coach ham string himself by not signing big free agents?

Well, here's my thought. Marvin Lewis signed on 30+ years ago (that's what it felt like). He hires in and Mike, citing not wanting to go spending crazy, nixes some potential signings. As time goes on, Marvin gets more roster control, but he doesn't realise his spending limit has increased, too. Mike, as a lot of bosses do, think his feelings are known and doesn't really express it. Instead, he goes off the recommendation of his coach.

Maybe Mike Brown isn't the cheapest guy in the world, maybe Marvin just wasn't good at asking to use the checkbook?

I've also been thinking about these signings and what would've happened with Marvin. I believe it was a combo of Mike and Marvin when it came to free agency. 

We all know about Mike and the way he liked to run the team. It was always "draft, develop, retain" and beaten into us every offseason. He enjoys operating under old school methods and doesn't really like to change. I wouldn't be surprised if he said that there was a limit to free agency. I could see him telling Duke and Marvin to wait a week to let things calm down and then go out and get the reasonably priced free agents.

As for Marvin, he was a conservative old school coach. For being considered a LB guru, Marvin just refused to adapt to the new athletic LBs that were taking over the league. He was always hard nosed for downhill thumpers, who pretty much sucked in coverage. I wouldn't be surprised if Marvin preferred to wait in FA because he didn't want the team to shell out big bucks. Remember the offseason entering 2015? Marvin told us that they needed to fix our how they looked at FA? How'd that work out? We brought in Nick Fairley and stopped talks with him when Michael Johnson got released. That was it. 

Now to be fair, Mike has basically handed over day to day duties to Katie, Troy, and Duke. This comes at a time when we happened to hire Zac. Now, I'm not expecting an offseason like this every year, but it'd be nice to see us at least talk to one Tier 1/Tier 2 FA every year.