On a scale of 1 to 10, the rumblings from Seahawks observers after Sunday’s ham-fisted loss at Arizona might be rated about a 4.
It’s nothing serious. Certainly, coach Mike Holmgren has seen worse. Nobody’s screaming for his job. No one in the hated media is after him. After all, Holmgren still basks in the Super Bowl grace period, which, depending on his team’s final 2007-08 record, should buy him at least another year of daisies and balloons.
In other words, this ain’t Cincinnati.
It’s trench warfare over there between the media and head coach Marvin Lewis. Lewis has made it plain what he thinks of the press. The press has reacted accordingly.
Skirmishes between football coaches and the media are hardly ever pretty, but they usually result in some pretty fascinating reading, in a kind of a voyeuristic sense. Picture Jerry Springer wearing a whistle and smashing a chalkboard with the cranium of an enraged redneck.
The issue at hand: How on God’s green Earth did the Bengals allow 51 points Sunday to the Browns, a team that took one look at their starting quarterback in Week One and waived him days later? And related to that, how did a guy with three starts at quarterback rip up the Bengals defense?
This is the salvo Lewis tossed Monday into the media’s foxhole: “I tell the players all the time, ‘Don’t try to explain it to the media, because you (the media) won’t understand it.’”
So the press returned fire, led by Cincinnati Enquirer columnist Paul Daugherty, who wrote a nasty piece under the headline “Lewis takes media for fools.”
In it, Daugherty drips sarcasm in his claims that football is for scholars and complains that Lewis relies year after year on non-answers such as “We just have to play better” and “We just have to keep playing” and the ever-popular “We’re going to move forward.”
Daugherty’s best line: “Marvin Lewis considers dealing with the media en masse a waste of time, like trying to teach Spanish to an English muffin.”
The newspaper ran a poll that asked readers what they thought the Bengals should do to fix the defense and gave four choices. The runaway winner at more than 47 percent was to fire defensive coordinator Chuck Bresnahan and have Lewis assume defensive play-calling duties.
Asked about that possibility, Lewis said he wouldn’t respond to that question, which must have further amused his detractors.
The Dayton Daily News ran the headline “Lewis ‘smug and condescending,’” which is the way a Cincinnati sports-talk show host described the coach’s treatment of the media.
In other words, it’s on in the Queen City.
It didn’t take long for the Lewis regime to fall from grace in Cincinnati. After Dick LeBeau was fired for going 2-14 in 2002, Lewis took over and led the Bengals to an 8-8 mark. Suddenly, the team was vital again. Lewis could have run for mayor and won. They duplicated the record in 2004 and hit their high-water mark in 2005 at 11-5.
But then it fell apart. The team fell to 8-8 again in 2006. Nine different Bengals were arrested in a nine-month stretch. Wideout Chris Henry was arrested so many times that if jail were the end zone, he’d be Jerry Rice. Commissioner Roger Goodell rewarded Henry by suspending him for the first eight games this season.
So, this thing has been building for a while. Between talking about the team’s growing rap sheet and their on-field struggles, Lewis looks forward to press conference like he looks forward to a prostate exam.
It’s unfortunate, if a tad entertaining. After talking to Lewis on a conference call Wednesday, I thought he came away as thoughtful, amusing and engaging. Maybe after Sunday’s game against the Seahawks, he’ll stay in Seattle instead of boarding the flight back home.
It all serves to remind us that, as bad as it appears here, there’s always something worse going on somewhere else.
Sports columnist John Sleeper: sleeper@heraldnet.com. For Sleeper[`]s blog, click on “Dangling Participles” at www.heraldnet.com.
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