The defense stinks claims are reasonable on the surface but geesh have they been beaten down with injuries. Last time I botherred to look they had a few LBers that were sitting on the WW because no other team wanted them. Odell Thurman is the one that bugs me most. I thought he was gonna be just terrific in this league.
The character concerns are a last year issue. Marvin took his beating last year for that and he has been all over it this year. IIRC They just dumped a high draft pick(Nicholson) player this summer. When's the last time you heard Henry being arrested? Last couple years and this year are night and day difference with his players acting like ...well adults. The "what a mess" people need to give him some credit for this year. He did seem to straighten things out some.
Re-draft picks. Marvin Lewis brought change to Cincy. They had some ridiculously low # of scouts and (unlike other teams or what you'd expect) the coaches were expected to do it. That was crazy as some teams hire dozens of people to scout college talent all year long. When he was hired, part of bringing him on was adding a real scouting dept and not just a few guys or whatever it was. This new(relatively) unit does fairly well at evaluating talent but seems to really stink at evaluating risks like injury history or character flaws. They sooooo have to improve in this area.
I won't bother linking to the numerous posts praising the talent of some of these players but....many here liked alot of their picks at the time.
I don't see the point in firing Marvin. With an actual NFL caliber LB corps, next year's coach is going to do better with the D than this years. I feel like that's a given. I wouldn't want to mess with the continuity of what's one of the better offenses in the league. If you think you'd like to, think of Sean Payton and Norv Turner's meddling this year. I don't see much gain from firing Marvin.
Hiring/firing/evaluating the scouting department would be an important step IMO
You mean Henry, the guy that missed half the season on suspension? I wouldn't call 5 months without an arrest a "success" story. And if he hadn't been gone for half the season how much different would their O be? And how much credit should Marvin get for that anyway since Henry had to stay away from Bengals facilities and meetings since the start of the season. And then, just to show how much he matured, he tells us that he "kind of" feels like he let his team down "a little". That's not accountability nor is it adult behavior. And it doesn't stop him from acting like a jackass when he hauls in a big pass either. He drafted Odell, knowing that there were character issues. And he's drafted several guys that have character issues. So when one of his character issue guys goes awry, you can't use "well if they had this guy..." as an excuse. You rolled the dice on a bad guy and you don't get a gimme because you were wrong. This year he's paying for the years of letting the character guys get in trouble, that's still his fault.
This "offense" put up a whopping 13 points in a national game against a horrible 3-10 team. Do you really think meddling is really going to hurt them? He's got his players talking trash on and off the field, CJ and his TD celebrations (in the 2 or 3 games he actually scores that is), Housh talking about how much better the team is than the teams that they are losing to. You watch their WRs and it's a ##### and moan and yelling for a flag fest after every incompletion. Palmer and CJ are in a tiff every game, except I noticed that Chad didn't have much to say after "Mr Closeup" DJacked a game tying TD. TJ catches the 4th down conversion and turns to his own sideline and starts talking trash and beating his chest, like his sideline needed to be reminded of how good TJ thinks he is. I would hardly call the HoF jacket and all the yelling from CJ and Tj as "adult behavior"
Sure they've had some players go down on D, but you can't list Odell as a casualty as that was brought on by Marvin drafting him in the first place, and other teams deal with it as well. But if your vaunted offense can't put up more than 13 one the lowly Niners, #####ing about the defense is laughable. Even with Henry back in it seems like the Bengals have gotten worse. It's a poorly run team with no acountability from from the coach on down, little discipline and little faith in each other. If that's not bad coaching, I dunno what is.
As for the Saints, how did Payton meddle with the O? He tried running the same offense as last year only without the heart of the O, Deuce. He needed to meddle more and change things up as soon as Bush became the feature back. Or do injuries only count against the Bengals performance.
