NFL Winners and Losers: Marvin Lewis stays, but change is needed
The initial reaction for many on Saturday night was that the Cincinnati Bengals needed to fire coach Marvin Lewis.
The moment passed. Firing Lewis didn’t make sense and it wasn’t realistic. Lewis has taken the Bengals to five straight playoff appearances. Kids, you might not know this but Cincinnati was once the laughingstock of the NFL, the worst franchise in the sport. Lewis changed that. He hasn’t broken through in the playoffs, but any notion that he hasn’t been a good coach is ridiculous. And this season he and the Bengals were really unlucky.
They were cruising along at 10-2 and then quarterback Andy Dalton, an MVP candidate, broke his thumb. The Bengals lost three of their last five, including an 18-16 playoff loss to the Steelers on Saturday night. It’s reasonable to assume they’d have won on Saturday night with Dalton, or maybe have had a first-round bye had Dalton never broken his thumb. It’s hard to fire a coach who is 52-27-1 the last five years because he lost a playoff game without his quarterback. And the Bengals won’t. ESPN’s Adam Schefter reported there are no plans to hire Lewis.
That’s smart.
All that said, Lewis needs to change some things. The Bengals’ patience isn’t going to last forever.
The culture needs to change. it seemed all of Saturday night like the Bengals were going to melt down, and eventually they did. It wasn’t a surprise when it happened. During a heated game between two rivals, CBS sideline reporter Tracy Wolfson said linebacker Vontaze Burfict was out of control and the coaches were trying to calm him down. As she was saying that, the cameras were showing Burfict back on the field.
Lewis shouldn’t have necessarily benched Burfict. He took over the game in the second half like few linebackers can. But was it a shock when Burfict boiled over with a bad penalty, the head shot on Antonio Brown, that cost the Bengals the game? Was it a big surprise that Burfict, Jeremy Hill and Adam Jones — three of the biggest character risks the Bengals have taken on in the Lewis era — were the players who let the Bengals down the most in the end? If Lewis can’t find a way to trust players like those in key moments, maybe they need to go.
Not all of the Bengals play on the edge. But it doesn’t help the perception of their team when some key players implode like they did. Lewis’ regular-season record has been very good, and it’s a great reason that it would be crazy to fire him now, but an 0-7 playoff record can’t be ignored either.
Lewis is going to have to change. The Bengals can’t put themselves in another position like they were in Saturday, completely self destructing and blowing a playoff game they had in hand. If Lewis doesn’t set a bit of a different tone and the Bengals aren’t mentally tougher in the playoffs next time around, eventually it won’t be such a surprise if Lewis got fired.
Here are the rest of the winners and losers from the NFL’s wild-card weekend:
WINNERS
Mike Zimmer: Zimmer started his news conference after Sunday’s 10-9 loss by talking about his team’s fight, and its heart.
“I’ve probably never been more proud of a football team than I am of this team,” Zimmer said.
The disappointment was obvious and understandable. But Zimmer is the right coach to hammer home a message to his team, after the gloom of a terrible loss passes: There are better days ahead.
The Vikings were not supposed to be in that spot this season, with Blair Walsh lining up for a chip shot field goal to beat the Seattle Seahawks. This was a young team and they’re ahead of schedule. A division title was a wonderful surprise. Green Bay Packers fans will argue but the Vikings should go into next season feeling that the NFC North goes through them. That’s a huge step for a franchise that had been well behind the Packers for a few years.
Sunday’s loss was brutal. It’s not going to pass instantly. But the Vikings should feel good about the season, and how they battled Seattle, a team that beat them 38-7 last month. There was plenty for Zimmer to be proud of, and should be more in the future.
Russell Wilson: Wilson made an incredible play that led directly to points in a 10-9 survival win over the Vikings. Oh, and he also made that pass to Tyler Lockett after the snap went past him and he rallied to make a play.
The Lockett play will get replayed many times, and maybe for years if that leads to Seattle making a third straight Super Bowl. Another play that didn’t show up in the stat sheet mattered a lot too.
Wilson was under extreme pressure in the fourth quarter and about to take a sack of about 20 yards from defensive end Everson Griffen, but got free just long enough to throw the ball away and get it past the line so there was no intentional grounding. It was an impressive athletic play to get the pass off. Instead of being at midfield with second-and-long, it was second-and-10 at the Vikings’ 29. The Seahawks gained just 1 more yard but kicker Steven Hauschka was still in field-goal range. He made a 46-yarder to give Seattle a 10-9 lead it wouldn’t give up.
Wilson’s incompletion wasn’t a highlight play but it was as important as any other he made. It was even as important as his amazing escape to find Lockett, the play that will get all of the attention.
Eddie Lacy: It hasn’t been an easy year for Lacy. He was demoted, and he’s still sharing time with James Starks in Green Bay’s backfield. But Lacy had two huge runs on Sunday that turned the Packers’ wild-card win.
With the Packers trailing 18-17 with less than six minutes remaining in the third quarter, they went for it on fourth-and-1. Lacy shot through the left side of the line for 11 yards. On the next play, Lacy had a nice cutback behind a good block from fullback John Kuhn and went for 30 yards down to the 4-yard line. Starks scored on the next play. That sequence turned the game around. The Packers never trailed again.
Lacy lost a fumble late in the game, and that might affect Mike McCarthy’s confidence in him. But the Packers aren’t going to beat the Arizona Cardinals on Saturday without Lacy playing a big role. For at least a couple runs on Sunday, it looked like that might be possible.
LOSERS
Joey Porter: Maybe you want to put Porter in the winners category, and I get why. The reason he was out on the field late in Saturday’s wild-card playoff game was to agitate, and he did just that. He got Adam Jones to take a really bad penalty and give the Steelers an easy field goal.
But the NFL can’t let it slide.
Why an outside linebackers coach was on the field, getting the Bengals angry during a heated game while the Steelers were driving, is hard to figure out. Jones was wrong to take a penalty, but he was right in wondering what Porter was doing on the field in the first place. Porter needs to be fined, at least.
The Bengals are getting a lot of heat for their antics on Saturday night. But between Porter and offensive line coach Mike Munchak pulling the hair of Bengals safety Reggie Nelson, the Steelers share plenty of the blame in the ugliness that happened.
Marshawn Lynch: It’s hard to criticize a football player when they look out for their own health. Nobody else will. But the Lynch situation is strange.
You can probably research for a long time without finding another instance of a player practicing in full three straight days, and then after the third practice ruling himself out. That’s what happened to Lynch, who didn’t even make the trip to Minnesota.
“We finished practice and after practice I went right to you guys to talk to the media, just going [on] what I had seen,” Carroll said, according to the team’s site. “But when [Lynch] went back to his locker and sat down he just didn’t feel it, didn’t feel like he could go, and that’s it. Just didn’t feel like he had it.
“There wasn’t enough time to build the confidence he needed that he could come here and do something, so that’s it.”
Carroll said he didn’t know if Lynch would play next week against the Carolina Panthers. Is it just a physical issue or is there something more going on? Lynch rarely shares his thoughts, so it’s always tough to tell. The Seahawks have been winning without him, including Sunday’s playoff victory against the Vikings.
If you had to guess at this moment, you’d say that Lynch is nearing the end of the line with the Seahawks. But, as everything else with Lynch and the Seahawks, stay tuned because it’s likely to change.
Brian Hoyer: This will get drowned out in all the screaming over Saturday’s horror show, but Hoyer wasn’t bad for the Houston Texans this season.
Nobody will remember. He picked a really bad day to have a nightmare performance. But Hoyer hadn’t thrown more than one interception in a game all season. He had just seven all season. Then he had four interceptions in a dominant win by the Kansas City Chiefs. He added a fumble. It was as bad as it could possibly get.
Nobody would say Hoyer is anyone’s ultimate answer at quarterback, but he had a 91.7 rating in the regular season. With a solid performance Saturday, the Texans likely would have felt he was a serviceable option going into next season. Now there’s going to be a lot of pressure to find someone else, when that’s not easy to do.
Even if Hoyer survives the offseason as the starter, this much is true: He erased any positive momentum he gained in one awful afternoon.
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Frank Schwab is the editor of Shutdown Corner on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter! Follow @YahooSchwab
