Change of place

Lewis has Bengals headed in a different direction

We're still months away from knowing whether Marvin Lewis is a difference-maker when it comes to Cincinnati's won-loss record. But 10 weeks or so into the Bengals' Lewis era, it's impossible not to notice the change in tone, change in direction that Cincinnati's new head coach already has set in place.

Lewis likes to refer to the process as turning negatives into positives. And if the Bengals turn out to be one of the NFL's turnaround teams in 2003, we might be able to trace the origins of Cincinnati's long-awaited revival to a few bold strokes early on in his tenure.

Like telling star linebacker Takeo Spikes that if he doesn't want to be a Bengal, then they don't want him to be one either. Or proving to starting quarterback Jon Kitna that close really does count when it comes to reaching lucrative incentive performance clauses in his contract.

And in free agency, normally a time of year in Cincinnati that's almost as humiliating as the regular season, Lewis has somehow transformed the franchise's punching-bag mentality into a look of growing confidence, one that attracted an impressive array of building-block talents.

How has Lewis done it? How do you begin building a team that went a franchise-worst 2-14 last season and hasn't had either a winning record or a playoff trip in 12 years? You start by fixing the little things, plunging into details long over-looked. You sweat the small stuff, and believe big things will follow.

If you're Lewis, you spend great amounts of energy worrying about drive time, all the while admitting it has nothing to do with how long your offense holds the ball. Instead it's about that age-old struggle between perception and reality.

"We've focused on how we do things," Lewis said at the NFL's annual meeting in Phoenix. "When a [free agent] comes to town, how he's picked up? How's he taken to the hotel? What's there at the hotel? His perception of the city, where we go eat, how we bring him into the stadium, everything about that was important. It was things that nobody here had thought of [before].

"When you recruit in college, you do those things. Those are the things you think about. How you drive a guy around the city? What routes do you take? Where do you take him to show him? Do you involve the wife? Who's important to him? Who's going to help him make the decision? Those are all the things we talked about and were important for us to do, as we brought these guys to town. And I think that's helped us acquire the guys we have."

Lewis is already fond of saying that it doesn't matter what the Bengals have done in the past. That it holds no significance for the future. But of course he's wrong, or at least framing the issue unrealistically. We measure by the past, and use it to gauge almost everything we do. It is that Bengals' past, as sorry as any in recent NFL history, that tells us just how far Lewis already has come.

Truth be known, the Bengals' past is the best thing that Lewis has going for him in the future. You want to know how long it has been since the Bengals were a winner?

Think of it this way: When Cincinnati played in its most recent playoff game, the opening shots of the first Gulf War were still a few days away. In that game, played Jan. 13, 1991, the then-Los Angeles Raiders triumphed even though they lost the services of running back Bo Jackson with a freakish hip injury that would eventually end his amazing two-sport career.

The Bengals have been floundering ever since, but Lewis and his coaching staff have quickly chipped away at the stigma that Cincinnati is an unwinnable situation. Free agents such as linebacker Kevin Hardy, cornerback Tory James and defensive linemen John Thornton and Carl Powell were sold on the program, and the team's returning veterans have been enthusiastically supportive of Lewis's positive approach.

The gap between the rest of the league and the S.O.B. (same old Bengals) mentality has noticeably shrunk. It's still early, but you get the feeling that Cincinnati is in the first stages of losing its second-class status.

"I don't know that we've changed, I just know what we've done," Lewis said. "We've just made it a professional organization like any other should be. We have an outstanding facility there. We have a city that loves football.

"One of the things I think is that players are more appreciative. As the [free agents] came into visit, they were like, 'Whoa, look at this place. You have this and you have that, and this is in place and that's in place.'"

Lewis has done more work on reversing the losing mind set of the franchise than he has on the football side of things. After the draft, in which Cincinnati has another huge opportunity to remake its image with the first overall pick, the football part of his program will start falling into place. Until then, his challenge remains convincing these Bengals that they really can change their stripes.

That's the message sent by Lewis's handling of the Spikes situation -- either be happy you're here, or be gone -- and the Bengals' surprising decision to pay Kitna his $1.6 million performance bonus. Does anyone doubt that those two matters would have been dealt with differently without Lewis in the picture? Under the Bengals' old way of operation?

"I think it was the right thing to do," said Lewis, of team president/owner Mike Brown's decision to pay Kitna the bonus, even though the quarterback fell just short of its activation threshold by conventional standards. "What people were perceiving as a negative became, I think, a positive. I didn't have to encourage Mike. He just asked me what I thought, and I told him what I thought.

"If you're going to err on a side, err on the side of your player. I think down the line that's going to pay dividends for all of our guys."

As a first-time head coach, Lewis believes he has been uniquely positioned in the NFL. He has served on the staff of three other first-time head coaches in Pittsburgh's Bill Cowher, Baltimore's Brian Billick and Washington's Steve Spurrier. He has taken away lessons from all three.

"It was a great springboard to some of the pitfalls things that hide around the corners that you don't normally see," he said. "In our situation in Cincinnati, there were a lot of things I felt like I'd like to do a little differently. And I've been able to go through and do those things, basically from the time guys drive their cars in that parking lot, until after they leave at night.

"We need to learn to be pros. That's what we've got to do. We've got to do a better job of the details of the our jobs. And if we do that, I think we'll make fewer errors on the field, which will help us win more football games."

Ultimately, that's the only measuring stick that will determine if the Lewis era in Cincinnati really is different from all those regimes that preceded his. But so far, it's hard not to like what you see, and what you hear. Lewis has a plan and he's boldly executing it. It's only April, but with the Bengals, that already passes as progress.

Don Banks covers pro football for SI.com.

 

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