5 questions with Bengals owner Mike Brown

PHOENIX — The league meetings kick off on Monday and that allows time for Mike Brown to sit down with The Enquirer and the club website at the sprawling Arizona Biltmore Hotel to discuss the state of the franchise this offseason.

The sting of the latest in four consecutive playoff berths ending in four consecutive first-round losses wasn't lost as Brown and the family leadership assess how to avoid another season falling short of the growing expectations.

The interesting element about 2015 seems to be how the cloud of a challenging 2016 offseason effect the tone of the year. A large portion of the teams core players enter this season in contract years, including wide receiver A.J. Green. Andy Dalton's contract flips to one with a large cap number and Marvin Lewis enters the final season of his deal still without an extension.

The stage sets for a seminal season in the big picture of this edition of the franchise, but the Brown family, while planning for the next season, holds all focus on figuring out the formula for a playoff run for this year on a team looking as solidly constructed as any in the most successful regular-season run in franchise history. The future is, indeed, now.

Here were answers to five important questions hanging over the franchise as Brown weighed in on Dalton's status, a possible extension for Lewis, his position on rule votes this week, how to approach A.J. Green's expiring contract and the key for getting this franchise over the hump.

Question: Is it important to attempt an extension with Marvin before the season to avoid the idea of a lame-duck coach in the final year of his contract?

Brown: I don't view it that way. We have done this kind of arrangement with Marvin off and on through the years. This is not the first time. It's not something unusual at all to expect people to fulfill their contract before you talk about their next contract.

Follow-up: Do you feel like Marvin has to do more to fulfill his contract to earn the next one?

MB: I think Marvin has done a fine job with us. He's been with us for a long time now. We have a good relationship. I hope that relationship goes forward into the future. But we aren't at the future yet. We don't have to make this decision until after this year. He doesn't have to make this decision until next year. Right now he's under contract and he's fulfilling it as we would expect and he knows he should.

Q: How do you approach talking with A.J. about a possible extension, others used franchise tag like Denver (Demaryius Thomas) and Dallas (Dez Bryant), is that the way it's going at a position where the money is so large?

MB: It's a difficult test for us but we do have the fallback if we need to of using the franchise tag. So, that's one option. Our problem is what you just said, the money is so big. We are going to have a finite cap room with a handful of players who are going to be eligible for free agency. We are going to have to see what we can get done with that. We don't know yet where we are going to end up but we have tried to prepare ourselves for it some by holding back on cap expenditures this year which can be rolled over into next year. That will give us a little bit more potential to make deals.

Q: Where do you see Andy Dalton at right now?

MB: Andy is a good quarterback. I was talking to somebody with another team and he was going on about things in general and he made the off-the-cuff remark, of course, you guys have a quarterback. You go round and about and Andy is perceived higher by some people than he seems to be all the time locally. He is the style of guy who can function best when he has a good group around him. He needs that. Maybe he needs it more than some, but they all need it. There is no quarterback that goes out and has success without good players in the mix. We ran out of gas last year at the end. You can't talk about it because its considered whining and you are put down for it if you do. But we understood what it meant to.

Q: What has to happen to get it over the hump and go deep in January and win it all?

MB: We know full well we haven't won a playoff game. People seem to think we are unaware of it. We aren't. We want to get to the playoffs again and that's very difficult. We are going to strive to do that. That's where our focus is going to be. If we get another crack at it everyone in this organization wants to win when we do that. But I am not going to distract the team or say something that the public misinterprets. Our focus is literally on who do we play in Game One of the regular season. Then just taking one at a time. That's the old cliche but that's all you can do. You start focus on something grander than that and you are just going to run yourself aground.

Q: Will you vote for any of the proposed rule changes this week, particularly with so many about expansion of replay?

MB: I will likely vote against the expansion of instant replay, whatever its form. Every team who felt an injustice last year — shouldn't say every team, too many teams who felt injustice — reached out with a proposal to correct it in hindsight through instant replay going forward. Spare me. We all have those cases. It's remarkable to me that we have as many stoppages in the game as we do. I don't want more of that. I want less of that. Instant replay is one of those. They have gotten more efficient with it. That's good. Still, it's a couple minutes plus every time it kicks in. I am willing to accept the calls on the field. Sometimes are better than others. It's part of the game.