Former Bengals head coach Marvin Lewis says Cincinnati’s biggest scouting gap has been on the pro side, even as the organization has slowly expanded its staff this century.
The topic came up on a recent Inside Football show on the Trey Wingo Network, when former NFL general manager John Keim asked Lewis about why the Bengals have traditionally used fewer scouts in that department than most teams. Lewis said that changed once he arrived, but not every part of the process has caught up.
“When I took the job, we doubled it right then,” Lewis noted on the show. “That was the one thing that was done differently in the past, through his father's direction, being Paul Brown.
They wanted the coaches involved, and when I took the job, part of the process, and we talked about it, is that the coaches can't be responsible for going out and looking at the tight end at Florida Atlantic. They've got to be able to evaluate what we did schematically during the season and begin to make our revisions going into next season, and then evaluate our personnel, and then evaluate the personnel throughout the NFL.”
Lewis said the remaining issue is the workload on pro personnel evaluators, who he believes should be able to stay focused on that area without also carrying college responsibilities.
“The only shortcoming would be having more ability in the pro area,” Lewis noted. “That it's constant, so they're not wearing both hats.
The people that are in the building, the personnel evaluators in the building, don't have to wear both hats and go from the college evaluation to now evaluating the pro personnel when January comes around after they've submitted all their college stuff. To me, that's the only drawback that remains in comparison to Duke, who doesn't want to have a huge personnel department.
He wants the guys that he trained brought in that building and trained underneath him, and know they all speak the same language and see the player through similar lenses.”
Cincinnati did add a couple of scouting department pieces last summer, according to Jay Morrison.
Elsewhere, the Bengals have made major changes across the organization during the Joe Burrow era. The question now is whether that work is enough to push Cincinnati back into contention this fall. Burrow, by the article’s read, may have the most talent around him he’s had in Cincinnati, and the roster’s ability to stay healthy looms large in a league often decided by the team whose quarterback avoids injury attrition best.
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