BY JOEY KROMER AND PARKER SULLIVAN
As Bengals fans, it seems like one day keeps repeating over and over again. Except we’re not Bill Murray and this isn’t Groundhog Day, it’s AFC Wild Card weekend.
After losing their 4th straight playoff game, many local Bengals fans are calling for some changes.
“There’s a lot wrong with the Bengals right now,” says sophomore Joe Veeneman. “For one, they have a lot of cap space that they just refuse to use on new free agents.”
Cincinnati has $8.8 million dollars in cap space (the amount of money that is left within the salary cap of a team) for 2015 Free Agency, which ranks 6th in the NFL. With many viable free agents on the market this offseason, Bengals fans are hoping for a change.
One area of focus, according to Veeneman, needs to be the defensive line and pass rush, which was somewhat ineffective.
“Ndamukong Suh or Nick Fairley from Detroit would really help our defensive line,” says Veeneman.
On the other side of the ball, the offense needs to make some changes at the quarterback position. Andy Dalton has a contract which is guaranteed only for the next year, with team options for the following three.
“Mike Brown wasted a lot of money on Andy Dalton, who hasn’t been good when we really needed him to be,” says junior Ty Bucher. “They won’t get another quarterback because they paid Dalton too much, so they’re stuck with him for now.”
Brown is another part of the problem. He is one of three owners in the NFL who makes his money purely from football (along with Cardinal’s Bill Bidwilland and the Bears’ Virginia McCaskey). Patriots (who have qualified for the AFC championship game each of the past four years) owner Robert Kraft is the owner of the Kraft Group (no, it’s not the company that makes your mac and cheese, but it is the company that earned 1.5 billion in revenue from ownership of companies that deal with sports and entertainment, manufacturing, and real-estate development). The owner of last year’s champion, the Seattle Seahawks, Paul Allen, helped create Microsoft with Bill Gates.
An NFL team, much like any professional sports team, is a lot like a business. No business or team will be anything better than average when you are conservative with money and refuse to take risks, and Brown is not willing to take fiscal risks.
This can be seen in Marvin Lewis’ tenure as head coach. After 12 years at the helm of the Bengals, Lewis has literally no success at all in the postseason, and yet Brown sticks with him. Lewis is a part of the bottom half of salaries for coaching, a group which contains only four playoff coaches (Lewis, Jim Caldwell of the Lions, Ron Rivera of the Panthers, and Chuck Pagano of the Colts).
Successful coaches cost more money than Brown is willing to pay, proven by Lewis’ salary. If the organization wants success, they are going to have to put more money in the coaching staff.
Another part of a successful business is great employees. There are two owners in the NFL who act as the general managers of their teams, Brown and Jerry Jones (the owner of the Cowboys).
While some may claim that the system is working for the Cowboys after the successful season they had in 2014, those who claim this must remember that this is the first time they have been above .500 winning percentage since 2009. This is a system that simply does not work.
The simple truth is this: with Mike Brown at the wheel, the Bengals will be too conservative to go further than the AFC divisional round. There is a fundamental problem with an organization when the last team that you beat in the playoffs is no longer a team in the NFL (The Houston Oilers).
It has been 24 years since the last victory for the Bengals, despite 7 chances in the playoffs over that span, the team’s longest drought in its history.
According to Albert Einstein, the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. The Bengals organization has been doing just that over the last few years. The same conservative coach, the same control freak general manager/owner, and the same result has ended the Bengals’ season: a loss in the first round of the playoffs.
Thus we believe the Bengals need to revamp their entire administration.
First and foremost, Mike Brown needs to take some of the responsibilities off his table. He needs to leave the business to the businessmen, the general managing to the general managers, and keep the owning up to himself. He is a great drafter, but being both a GM and an owner is a poor decision.
Additionally, the Bengals need a change in coaching staff. Marvin Lewis is the longest standing coach at his team in the NFL, and while this loyalty may be respectable, the lack of postseason success indicates the need for a change. That goes for coordinators as well. The Bengals should find a new head coach and allow him to bring in a staff that he can work with.
The Bengals have been doing the same thing season in and season out, and it has resulted in a record slightly above .500 and a loss in the AFC Wild Card round. In order to move forward, changes must be made within the staff and administration.