It's time to nominate Marvin Lewis for NFL Coach of the Year. He deserves the nomination, if not the award, now that the Bengals have won the AFC North Division championship and earned a home playoff game with a 17-10 victory over the Kansas City Chiefs.
Lewis probably isn't going to win the award, even though he has navigated the Bengals through every conceivable mine field while guiding them to a 10-5 record. These 10 victories represent a 6-win improvement, at this point, over last season, an unmitigated 4-11-1 disaster.
Lewis' break-through as a leader coincided with the Indianapolis Colts barreling down on just the third unbeaten regular season in NFL history under a first-year head coach. Former Colts assistant Jim Caldwell inherited a very good 12-4 team from Tony Dungy and made it better while making an attempt to become the first rookie coach in league annals to start his career with a 16-0 season. With a healthy Payton Manning on the bench in the second half, the Colts lost to the Jets on Sunday, which could open the door for Sean Payton as Coach of the Year. Payton guided the once-moribund New Orleans Saints to a 13-0 start and has the former "Aints" poised as the NFC favorites to take on the Colts in the Super Bowl.
One or the other, Caldwell or Payton, is probably going to be NFL Coach of the Year.
But, a strong case can be made for Lewis in Cincinnati.
It took the Bengals three games to sew up their first division title since 2005, but they finally did it on Sunday in front of their home fans at sold-out Paul Brown Stadium after failing twice to win the division on the road.
A Bengals squad with weaker resolve or one with a weaker psyche might have collapsed under the strain of a short and heavy-hearted practice week. The team began the work week in Louisiana to attend the funeral of Chris Henry, who died the previous Thursday from injuries suffered in a truck accident in North Carolina.
Under Lewis and in the face of yet another monumental distraction from the job at hand, the grieving Bengals did not fold.
They rallied together against the Chiefs just as they did the week following the death of defensive coordinator Mike Zimmer's wife, Vikki Zimmer, who died from natural causes at home in October. The team is still wrestling with Vikki Zimmer's sudden passing. The tragic ending to Chris Henry's life at the age of 26 during a season in which he was a key early-season contributor before breaking his left forearm, was considered piling on.
"We have been through a lot off the field. On the field, we have guys who don’t flinch," Carson Palmer said.
But this season of unnecessary roughness for the Bengals got off to a rocky start way before tragedy struck.
They lost their top two tight ends (Reggie Kelly and Ben Utecht have been out for the season) and their No. 1 draft pick, offensive lineman Andre Smith (who returned only recently), to injuries during training camp. In the first few weeks of the season, they lost their best defensive player, end Antwan Odom, after Odom got off to a record-setting sack pace. Also lost to injury early in the season was free-agent safety Roy Williams. Run-stuffing tackle Domata Peko was out for a long stretch, while key players such as tailback Cedric Benson, defensive tackle Tank Johnson and safety Chris Crocker missed at least two games at various junctures.
Linebacker Rey Maualuga broke his ankle on Sunday. He is out for the season.
Palmer, just a year removed from a serious elbow injury, has been quarterbacking the team while playing with a mangled left thumb that requires a funky hand-off and offseason surgery. The loss of Henry Nov. 8 against Baltimore took away Palmer's vaunted deep game because the Bengals don't have another receiver on the roster with Henry's deep-ball skills.
Lewis, undaunted by the number of Bengals in sick bay, had his team covered, even though he could not unearth another deep-threat receiver to lengthen the field for Palmer.
Among the moves Lewis did help orchestrate in conjunction with team president Mike Brown was making the tough decision to waive long-standing long-snapper Brad St. Louis after St. Louis very nearly short-circuited special teams and certainly cost the Bengals points with his errant snaps early in the year. Newcomer Clark Harris, brought in to replace St. Louis, has been virtually flawless as the new long-snapper.
Larry Johnson has given the Bengals depth in the backfield and a 100-yard rushing game since he became a gutsy but calculated mid-season pick-up at a time when Benson was sidelined with a hip injury and rookie back Bernard Scott (unwanted in the draft by all but Lewis) was banged up.
LJ is just the latest in a long line of acquisitions who have panned out for the Bengals after failing to impress elsewhere around the league. Nearly half the players listed No. 1 on the Bengals' depth chart have been given up on by previous teams, for one reason or another, including Crocker, Tank Johnson, middle linebacker Dhani Jones, plus Benson, receiver Laveranues Coles (who had a touchdown Sunday), tight end J.P. Foschi, guard Evan Mathis, tackle Dennis Roland and fullback Jeremi Johnson, whom the Bengals themselves gave up on only to bring him back this season after the fullback missed all of 2008 with weight- and injury-related issues. On special teams, Harris and Shayne Graham are rejects. Undrafted rookie returner Quan Cosby is a converted pro baseball player whom nobody wanted, except coach Lewis.
Lewis molded the misfits into a cohesive unit that thinks team first. Lewis saw the genius in bringing in Zimmer as defensive coordinator. Lewis saw the wisdom in re-establishing the Bengals as a running team, even though he had one of the best arms in the league with the two-time All-Pro Palmer directing the offense. Lewis had faith in his top offensive assistant, line coach Paul Alexander, when Alexander said the team could make do with the likes of no-names such as Mathis, Roland, guard Nate Livings and center Dan Cook anchoring the offensive line.
During this past week as the team wrestled with yet another tragedy, Lewis put the Bengals on his back by saying, "I got you," the day before and the day after Tuesday's funeral for Henry.
Said Lewis: "I knew we were going to need some energy this week. We knew Tuesday was going to be a long day. I knew after the disappointment of the loss, it was hard. You’ve got to mount back up, but it can’t be the same message. We had to gather back up again and get going. I had to trim things out of practice; we just couldn’t be the 'same-old, same-old.' I think the guys did a good job responding to that."
When the Bengals finally made it to Sunday, they looked like a team that had been through the wringer, at least on offense. But, once again, the much-improved defense kept the Bengals in the game a week after the Chiefs had a 300-yard passer, a 100-yard rusher and a 100-yard receiver against the Browns.
As the Bengals offense has done so often this season, it awakened at the end of the game after a bit of sleep-walking. The Bengals had to travel nearly the length of the football field to break a 10-10 fourth-quarter tie against the pesky Chiefs (3-12). Palmer, shaking off suggestions he's lost the magic touch, methodically drove the Bengals into the playoffs by putting together a time-consuming 98-yard drive, with the help of Benson, whose second season in Cincinnati has coincided with the Bengals' second playoff appearance in 19 years.
Both playoff campaigns since 1990 have come under Lewis, who arrived in Cincinnati in 2003.
The Bengals' longest drive of the season traveled farther than the official 98 yards. Benson was dropped for a 1-yard loss on first down. That gave the Bengals second-and-11 from their own 1, with little margin for error against a jacked-up Kansas City defense that was shredded the previous week by the Browns' rushing attack.
Benson fast-forwarded everything after the negative-yardage run, carrying seven times in all during the go-ahead drive for 30 yards, including a 20-yard romp to the Chiefs' 25 with 5:42 to play. He finished with 133 rushing yards on 29 carries and set a franchise record with his sixth 100-yard rushing game of the season. Palmer completed six of eight passes for 64 yards on the drive, including a 21-yarder to Coles on the play just before Benson's big burst put Cincinnati within Shayne Graham striking distance.
But the Bengals went all the way.
Palmer completed a pair of third-and-6 passes, the first for 12 yards to Coles down to the Chiefs' 9; the second for a 6-yard TD strike with 2:05 left to Chad Ochocinco, the only Bengals player on the roster left over from the year before coach Lewis arrived. Ochocinco celebrated the go-ahead score by paying tribute to Henry, first by kissing a back-of-the-end zone poster emblazoned with Henry's uniform No. 15 then by holding up one finger on his left hand and five fingers on his right hand as he returned to the Bengals sideline.
"It’s a really good feeling," Chad said of clinching the division and a playoff berth. "But I’m not jumping for joy or glee, just thinking about No. 15 (Henry) once that clock hit zero. That was everybody’s mindset — to go out there and win this one for him."
The Chiefs got the ball back with a shot at tying the score and moved into Bengals territory with 1:19 to play, but Leon Hall intercepted Matt Cassel at the Cincinnati 19. The Bengals punted after three Benson carries. The game ended on an unreturned punt by unsung hero Kevin Huber, whom Lewis had to have in this year's draft.
A drafted punter? Who knew?
Apparently, Lewis knew.
Nothing has come easy for the Bengals - not now, not ever. This season in particular, one that began under the associative heading "Hard Knocks," has been fraught with team-wide transitional issues, devastating game losses, injuries and, tragically, death.
Guard Bobbie Williams said Sunday's 98-yard drive encapsulates the Bengals' never-say-die attitude, even after death has taken their very own.
"Not dead, can’t quit. If you’re not dead, you can’t quit," Williams said of the team's perseverance. "There was no doubt in our minds. We just had to execute. It’s due time. Great feeling. We’re going to enjoy it tonight, but we’ve got business coming up. New York, we plan on going in there and executing our game plan. Look at that — we just won the AFC North, and we already are talking about next week."
Few football coaches could have taken a team that won four games and guided it to the playoffs the next season while dealing with the things Lewis has had on his plate this year. Few coaches for a snake-bitten franchise with a long losing history could have successfully assured his team that a fluke season-opening loss was not a tone-setter for the remainder of the schedule. Few teams could have swept four games against last season's AFC championship game combatants (Pittsburgh and Baltimore) with so much swirling about. In fact, no other team did that this season, and the Bengals are ahead of both the Steelers and Ravens where it counts right now - in the division standings.
Give as much credit as you want to Lewis, who has grown up this season as a football coach, right along with his grown-up football team.
"We don’t like to make things too easy, but that’s all right," Lewis said.
After all he's dealt with in 2009, Lewis deserves a medal.
The league's Coach of the Year award will do.