Bengals reportedly give Marvin Lewis a one-year extension
The Bengals reportedly gave Marvin Lewis a one-year extension.
By
Will Brinson
•
1 min read
Despite failing to make it out of the first round of the playoffs for the seventh-straight season, the Bengals extended Marvin Lewis, according to a report.
Mike Silver of NFL.com reported Friday the Bengals tore up Lewis' current contract -- set to expire after the 2016 season -- and replaced it with a two-year deal that will take the long-time Cincinnati coach through 2017.
The "can't win a playoff game" narrative isn't some fictional creation. Lewis is 0-7 in 13 years with the Bengals, including five straight losses in the Bengals' opening round.
But it's worth noting the Bengals didn't go to the playoffs for 13 straight years before Lewis arrived -- the last time Cincy made the playoffs before Lewis' arrival was in 1990. They were the laughingstock of the NFL during the '90s, the modern-day Browns before the Browns returned.
The Bengals are a consistently talented team in the NFL throughout the regular season. They don't play well in the playoffs, and it stings, but there have been extenuating circumstances at different points for those games.
Lewis shouldn't get a free pass for the playoff games, which is precisely why he's only getting a one-year deal, but the Bengals could do much, much worse than Lewis.
Making the playoffs and losing early for five-straight years sounds terrible until you haven't actually made the playoffs.
Credit Mike Brown for not acting rashly in this situation and continuing to let Lewis and his staff develop quality players and coaches and continue to take the Bengals in a consistent, positive direction.
Lewis is still the second-longest tenured coach in the NFL behind the Patriots' Bill Belichick -- the willingness of the Bengals to be patient with his franchise development is a reason Cincinnati is consistent in a difficult era to be a quality NFL team year in and year out.
