On Thursday night, as he gave his post-game press conference, Marvin Lewis looked about as sad and dejected as I've seen him during his six-year stint as the Bengals' head coach. Cincinnati had just lost their ninth game of the season, and had sent one of their best players, Chad Javon Ocho Cinco home earlier in the day because the Pro Bowl wideout couldn't -- or, more likely, wouldn't -- stop sleeping during a team meeting. Unless Lewis gets "Scott Linehan-ed" (fired midseason), or less likely, pulls a "Bobby Petrino" (quits with a month to go), he's still got to coach the Bengals up for five more weeks. It's a daunting task considering that virtually everybody in the building checked out for the year sometime around Halloween.
Yet Lewis trudges on.
Cincinnati won't play again until Nov. 30, and Ocho Cinco will be on the field. The team fined him a few bucks for narcolepsy-inspired insolence, but the plan all along was to deactivate Johnson for the Steelers game and have him back at practice Monday.
Quarterback Carson Palmer, on the other hand, is a different story. He hasn't played since Oct. 5 against the Cowboys, and while the team contemplated putting him on injured reserve nearly a month ago, Lewis still holds out hope that Palmer could see the field sometime next month.
Not sure why you'd subject the franchise player to such treatment -- wintry conditions and an injury-plagued, porous offensive line -- but it's still a possibility. So there you go, Bengals fans: that's your silver lining. Merry Christmas.
