In an interview with NFL Network conducted in conjunction with his assignment to coach one of the squads at the Senior Bowl, Bengals coach Marvin Lewis addressed the perception that the team got away from the things that made the offense successful in 2009.
Running the ball.
“We did click into the no-huddle offense a little bit this season, as we got going in the season,” Lewis told Mike Mayock, Paul Burmeister, and Charles Davis. “And it may have affected some of our detail of how we were doing things in the running game, because you can’t serve two masters that way.
“The no-huddle takes work on its own to get everybody on the same page all the time. And I think that’s the one thing, if we look back on it again we’d probably make that revision.”
But the no-huddle attack likely was implemented to take advantage of The T.Ocho Show or, perhaps more accurately, to keep them sufficiently fed with football in order to prevent them from becoming complete and total pains in the rear end.
Lewis adroitly sidestepped a question aimed at teeing up talk regarding the current conundrum the team faces at quarterback, with Carson Palmer wanting to be traded and owner Mike Brown saying it won’t happen. Lewis said only that he’s not paying any closer attention to the quarterbacks on his Senior Bowl squad than he’s paying attention to other players on the team.
He’s probably telling the truth, because he probably realizes that none of the quarterbacks playing for either squad at the Senior Bowl will be able to help the Bengals much in 2011, if Carson Palmer has decided that he’s done with the team.
And if Palmer isn’t with the team in 2011, it’s a fairly safe bet that the power running game will be back, in a big way.