

CINCINNATI – Following a disastrous four-win season in 2010, many Cincinnati Bengals fans wanted owner Mike Brown to fire coach Marvin Lewis. Nothing personal, Lewis is a terrific guy, but after eight seasons, you can't go 4-12, let alone when you're 60-67 overall. The trend line was obvious.



At the same time, plenty of Marvin Lewis' friends in football were calling him and telling him he needed to get out of Cincinnati. The franchise was lousy – too many bad apples on the roster, too much terrible history for it to be a coincidence. The script was written. He'd get another chance to do it right somewhere else.

Owner and coach had a meeting. They decided rather than separate, they'd reunite and apply the lessons they've learned in creating a losing team. And together, they'd change. Everything.

"I believed in him and he believed in me that we could get this right," Lewis said. "I restarted here. A lot of coaches have to move. I was basically able to start again here, [to] restart in the same spot."

[Yahoo! Sports Fantasy Football is open for business]

He didn't waste the opportunity, cleaning house that offseason, empowering a core group of character guys and riding the unexpected positive effects of the NFL lockout that offseason to rewire the entire franchise.

"The lockout was the best thing," Lewis said. "The lockout took this franchise back out of the muck. It was like an exorcism. It was really good."

On Wednesday, Lewis sat in a Paul Brown Stadium meeting room with HBO "Hard Knocks" cameras installed all over the place, the most tangible sign that this is one of the most anticipated seasons in team history.

View photos

The locker room down the hall isn't just deep with talent, but the kind of team-first, mentally strong players Lewis vowed to ride or die with. Gone are the days of the police-blotter Bengals, let alone a bunch of me-first talents. Two consecutive playoff seasons (albeit without a victory) have everyone talking about breaking through and making a January run.

And Lewis swears this is different than past times (after 2005 and 2009) when expectations got high.

He has a team that is willing to trade individual "recognition for the ability to win a championship," he said. "That's what's most important. It's different than if you have a group of guys [who] have a limited amount of success and then they have personal recognition and they think it's all about them and they want to write books and beat their chest."

There is no Ochocinco here. No T.O. No Chris Henry or Odell Thurman or almost anyone else who may fit the above description or worse. Pacman Jones is here, but Lewis says, "Adam begged for an opportunity and for the most part, he’s made good on it. Adam has really turned the corner." There is also a smarter, more surefooted coach with a different philosophy on building a roster and running a team.

"Things that we knew were true were proven in 2010 to be true," Lewis said. "If you do those things, you're going to get your butt whipped. And if you do these other things, you're gong to be successful. Unfortunately, we had to live the 2010 season to really get that imprinted on our foreheads."

He said he sat down immediately and began plotting out the revolution. Who would be in and who would be out. The Bengals have been drafting very good talent for years, now it would focus on character also. No more reaching for talent, Lewis said. He volunteered to coach the Senior Bowl that year to help get to know the prospects as people.

Story continues