Bengals coach Marvin Lewis talks like a rejuvenated man.
He has a young roster willing to take his lead. He has a defensive line rotation that rivals any group in the league. He has a bright offensive coordinator bringing new ideas to the offense.
Perhaps most importantly, Lewis seems happy about the players not on his team. Headaches like Chad Ochocinco and Terrell Owens are gone. It sounds like Lewis was ready for a change at quarterback too.
“At what point did Carson quit?” Bengals coach Marvin Lewis asked Les Carpenter of Yahoo! Sports. “At some point last year he decided he didn’t want to be here. This didn’t happen at the end of the season. There was a point earlier on when he said, ‘This isn’t the place for me.’ ”
Lewis said he didn’t want to convince anyone to play for him. Another team official put it in more understandable terms to Carpenter:
“We got rid of all our [expletive].”
The Bengals coach moved to quickly squash the story Wednesday before it got legs, saying the quotes were taken out of context.
“Let it go,” Lewis said via Joe Reedy of the Cincinnati Enquirer.
There’s no denying that Lewis has relished the Bengals reboot.
“I was getting an opportunity a lot of coaches don’t get to . . . and that is a chance to start over at the same place,” Lewis says.