Lewis has hands full repairing Bengals defense
The joy shows on Marvin Lewis’ face. The Bengals coach is back to doing what he loves — running a defense.
Can his return to his football roots save his team from an ignominious season? Will the 16th-year head coach get burned out doing two demanding jobs? And can he really make much of a difference on a defense that’s sapped by injuries and depending upon youth?
Those questions will start to get answers on Sunday when the Bengals (5-4) play at Baltimore (4-5), the place where Lewis led one of the NFL’s greatest defenses to a Super Bowl title in the 2000 season.
“I’ve got it,” Lewis said, with a reassuring smile.
The Bengals need to win Sunday in Baltimore and then at home against Cleveland the following week to keep themselves in playoff position heading Packers tight end Robert Tonyan catches a touchdown pass as he’s hit by Seahawks safety Bradley McDougald on Thursday night in Seattle. The Seahawks rallied to win 27-24.
into December.
Sensing his team is running out of time, Lewis fired defensive coordinator Teryl Austin on Monday and brought back close friend Hue Jackson to help him run the defense. Few try to balance running a defense and coaching a team because of the
exhausting workload during the week, let alone the challenges on game day.
Lewis, 60, seems energized by the role he’s carved out for himself. He enjoyed preparing the week’s defensive plan at home on Monday night, just like old times.
“It’s fun, I’ll tell you
that,” Lewis said. “It’s exciting for me.”
Players are curious about how things will change on Sunday. So far, Lewis has tried to focus on basics after players struggled to execute Austin’s defense. He’s also pulled out some plays from previous years and added them to the week’s package.
Cincinnati has allowed at least 500 yards in three straight games and is coming off a 51-14 loss to the New Orleans Saints.
Jackson sat in the back of the defensive room while Lewis unveiled the defensive game plan on Wednesday with a PowerPoint presentation that included a font so small that some players had trouble reading it on the screen. Instead, they followed along on their iPads.
“We all just kind of squinted and tried to figure it out,” linebacker Preston Brown said. “It was kind of funny.”
Why didn’t anyone point out the problem?
“If we’d won the past couple of games, we would have said something,” Brown said. “But we’ve given up 500 yards. We’re going to be quiet until we make a couple of plays.”
SEAHAWKS 27, PACKERS 24: Russell Wilson threw a 15-yard touchdown pass to Ed Dickson with 5:08 remaining and Seattle (5-5) held on to beat Green Bay (4-5-1). Wilson hit 21 of 31 passes for 225 yards and two scores. Aaron Rodgers passed for 332 yards and two touchdowns for the Packers.
Tim Green, who played eight seasons as a defensive lineman with the Atlanta Falcons, revealed he has ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig’s Disease.
Green, 54, wrote in a Facebook post Wednesday night that for the past five years he’s been coping with “neurological problems” in his hands. He says doctors first thought the damage his elbows had received during his playing days in the 1980s and 1990s was the culprit. But the problems didn’t go away after surgery and his voice also began to weaken before he was diagnosed with ALS.