Daugherty: Bengals owner Mike Brown need only answer one question

Well.

I’d love to wait until after the press conference Wednesday to react to the re-signing of Marvin Lewis, but this isn’t a wait-until business. So here goes.

This is a mistake.

Sure it could end up being the best move Mike Brown has made since he invested in a seersucker suit. The Marvin-led Men might win a Super Bowl next year, and never stop. Someday, Mike Brown might even drive his sensible, American-made sedan to his own Hall of Fame induction. Marvin riding shotgun.

It’s possible. Since I can’t predict the future – if I could, I’d be in Vegas, cherry-picking champions and making tall piles of cash – I can respond only to what my gut is telling me.

This is a mistake.

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Someone should ask this of Brown on Wednesday:

“Are you in business to win a championship?"

He will say yes.

“Could you explain how that might occur while doing business as usual?"

That’s the only answer required.

Don’t sweat the details. Don’t ferret out what power Lewis has today that he didn’t have yesterday. Don’t even worry about what’s gonna be different this time around, for the big ML 3.0 launch.

Are you in business to win a championship?

If you are, explain why you believe this coach is the coach to get you there. Because he’s had 15 cracks at it, and he hasn’t come close.

I don’t doubt that ownership “wants" to win a championship. Everyone wants things. I want to move to a tropical island paradise and aim 40-yard wedges at rows of Moscow Mule mugs. But I don’t need to. It doesn’t drive me.

Is this your passion, BrownTrust? The way it’s the passion of Bob Kraft and Jerry Jones and Arthur Blank, the Rooneys and others for whom finishing first is all that matters?

Are you in business to win a championship?

The accolades afforded Lewis have been generous in This Space recently. No need to repeat them. He moved a mountain, he’s wonderful for the community. He has been the Cincinnati Bengals' shining star. He hasn’t won a Super Bowl, or come close.

On Monday, he put Brown on trial. Lewis issued ultimatums: “Staying on the same page is important. If his direction is different than my direction, it’s probably not good."

He gave short-shrift to fans who have suffered like Job: “If you’re a real fan, stay the course."

He said without going full in-your-face: I am the man here, and if you want me to stay, you better change your game.

On Tuesday, I asked two prominent local CEOs how they might react if one of their managers had gone public with a similar barrage. Both said without hesitation, paraphrasing, “If I had a manager talk to me like that, he wouldn’t be here."

Coat, hat, door.

Not two-year contract. For a coach who hasn’t won a playoff game. Whose team won 13 games in the past two seasons, same as the Steelers won this season.

Anywhere else, this is outrageous. Here, it’s business as usual. By the way: Now that you’ve gone this route, please give Marvin every key and stop pretending you’re football people who know how to win the Super Bowl.

Meantime, Bengals fans walk the line between noble and foolish. This year, that started to change. The Anthem Crisis contributed, the concussion crisis contributed, the notion that at times the NFL is 10 pounds of hype in a 5-pound bag contributed. But around here, it was also that fans finally had quit the Bengals. Real fans.

In their 50th anniversary season, the Bengals actually marketed their product actively. It resulted in no sellouts and the 3rd-worst attendance in the league, ahead of only the vagabond Los Angeles Chargers and the bad-as-possible Browns. Ten-thousand short of capacity v. Pittsburgh, on a Monday night? Those numbers aren’t actual bodies in seats; they’re “tickets distributed."

As many real fans cried as rejoiced Sunday night, when Andy Dalton completed that improbable comeback with a 49-yard TD pass to Tyler Boyd on 4th-and-12. That was a great play. And straight-up fortuitous. A team will make a play like that a few times a year. It shouldn’t be seen as a sign of anything.

What has ownership seen from this team the past two years that would suggest Super Bowl? At this point in the Marvin conversation, if we’re not talking Super Bowl, why are we talking?

Bob Knight said this to me once: “You rarely get what you want in life, and you don’t often get what you expect. You get what you’re willing to put up with."

The Bengals will hold a press conference Wednesday. There will be this question and it is the only question necessary:

“Are you in business to win a championship?"

We await the answer.