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After interviewing Lewis, Bengals contact Coughlin

Tom Coughlin was the only head coach in Jacksonville Jaguars history. AP

By Don Banks, Sports Illustrated

Former Jacksonville head coach Tom Coughlin has been contacted by the Cincinnati Bengals about their coaching vacancy, although an interview has yet to be scheduled, Coughlin's agent confirmed Thursday.

Coughlin was fired Monday after eight seasons in Jacksonville, and speculation surfaced immediately that he would become a prime candidate for the Bengals' opening.

But while Cincinnati officials conducted Tuesday the first interview of their search with Redskins defensive coordinator Marvin Lewis, and have a scheduled interview with Steelers offensive coordinator Mike Mularkey in Pittsburgh on Saturday, there had been seemingly no rush to talk with Coughlin, who is the team's only candidate with previous head coaching experience.

Coughlin's agent, Gary O'Hagan, said Thursday that the Bengals contacted his client by phone in recent days, but that no face-to-face talks have been scheduled.

While some Bengals officials seem to regard Coughlin and his disciplinarian ways as the perfect antidote for Cincinnati's losing ways, others within the organization are lobbying team president and owner Mike Brown to look for a younger, more progressive head coach, whose reputation within the league -- in both positive and negative ways -- isn't as well established as Coughlin's.

It's possible that the Bengals view Coughlin as a fallback candidate should they fail to land either Lewis or Mularkey, who seem to have emerged as the early leading candidates.

Said one source close to the situation: "I'm not sure Tom is what they want right now. My sense is he's not the right guy for them."

Still, Coughlin's proven track record could be attractive to the Bengals, given that he led the Jaguars to four consecutive playoff berths in his first five seasons in Jacksonville. The Bengals haven't produced a winning season or a playoff berth since 1990, by far the longest drought in the league.

In his day-long interview on Tuesday, conducted at an undisclosed location in Cincinnati, Lewis is thought to have made a very favorable impression on Brown.

Lewis said he had candid discussions with Brown about the changes that need to be made within the organization, and Lewis laid out his vision for the team's future and how he would operate as its head coach.

Brown is known to be inspired by the success that young head coaches like Baltimore's Brian Billick and Pittsburgh's Bill Cowher have had in the Bengals' division. In interviewing Lewis and Mularkey, he is using those two franchises as a model for his search. Lewis was an assistant coach in both Pittsburgh and Baltimore, and Mularkey has moved up the ranks on Cowher's staff in recent years.

"We talked about changing their vision, and the way they go about some things," Lewis said. "If that's something they're open to, they've got a good chance to win. When you talk to coaches in the league, it's not as bad there as people make it out to be. There's still a ways to go, and some changes that have to be made, but there's something to build on.

"I gave them kind of my big-picture stuff. It may be too much. Maybe it was too big. Maybe they can't change that much. They disagreed about some points, but Mike let me have my say. He heard me out. If it's too much, I'll have to wait."

Lewis said he did not know the Bengals' timetable for naming a new coach, but there is the belief that Cincinnati would like to have a new staff in place in time to scout the Senior Bowl in mid-January in Mobile, Ala. That schedule could be tough to stick to, however, if Mularkey's Steelers make a deep playoff run.

Teams this season for the first time can conduct one interview with assistants on playoff teams, but those candidates can't be hired until their team is eliminated from the postseason.

"This is a family-run business," Lewis said. "They haven't been through this [a coaching search involving outside candidates] in a while. We talked about a lot of issues, but we'd have to go back over things in detail. We both would want to go through everything step by step."

Brown's daughter, team executive vice president Katie Blackburn, and her husband, Troy Blackburn, who's in charge of the team's business development, are seen as the agents of change within the Bengals organization. But Brown also is said to be open to doing things differently if the right head coaching candidate makes a strong enough case for change in the interview process.

With Lewis' expertise being on defense, his hiring might be seen as an indication that the Bengals will retain offensive coordinator Bob Bratkowski. He and Lewis know each other and are said to be comfortable with the idea of working together. Likewise, if Mularkey is hired, the Bengals would likely retain both defensive coordinator Mark Duffner, who is also expected to be interviewed for the head coaching job, and Bratkowski. He and Mularkey worked together on Cowher's staff in Pittsburgh in 1999-2000.

 

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