​The Marvin Lewis Era in Cincinnati is Over—Or At Least It Should Be

The Cincinnati Bengals weren't good enough to pull off a must-win game against a middling Baltimore Ravens today, and quite frankly, Marvin Lewis isn't good enough to coach the Bengals anymore. Yup, the Bengals' situation is looking just that grim right now.

Injuries and inconsistency, mistakes and missed kicks, little competitive fire and even less pass protection: The Bengals' 19-12 loss to the Baltimore Ravens was a tidy little summary of everything that's gone wrong with in 2016.

After quarterback Andy Dalton was strip-sacked for the third time today—and ball lost for the second time—his stat line read a miserable 26-of-48 for 283 yards and a score; that's a 54.2 percent completion rate, 5.9 average yards per attempt, and two percent touchdown rate.

True, he was without AJ Green and Giovani Bernard, but injuries happen to every team. More to the point, he was without Marvin Jones and Mohamed Sanu, who the Bengals let walk in the offseason. He was without any shield from the vicious Ravens pass rush, despite a parade of draft picks and money invested in in the offensive line. And Dalton, for all he's done, is not the kind of quarterback who can be an offense all by himself.

Defensively, age and sloppiness have robbed this defense of much of its bite. The bark is still there—but when Bad Joe Flacco shows up and makes as many mistakes as he did, the Bengals have to do a better job of capitalizing. When no Ravens wideout catches more than four passes or 57 yards, they shouldn't be able to score enough points to win.

It was a three-phase defeat, too. Kicker Mike Nugent missed his ninth kick of the season, punter Mike Huber was little help in the field-position game and the return units continued to struggle.

Serious question: has anyone explained special teams strategy to Erickson yet? If Bengals coaches won't do it, maybe one of us should.
— Bengals Problems (@BengalsProblems) November 27, 2016

Lewis had no tricks up his sleeve, no wrinkles in his game plan, no way to out-coach a coach who's already had to fire one of his coordinators this season. The Bengals are spent—and in a season where they were finally supposed to get over the hump, we safely bury Lewis under that hump.

Barring a miracle, this will only be Lewis' fourth losing season in 14 years. But he's also 0-7 lifetime in the playoffs, with five straight one-and-done efforts. Not-quite-good-enough has been good enough for Bengals owner Mike Brown, but this campaign falls well short of even that low measuring stick.

The fact is, the Bengals are definitively the third-best team in the AFC North—and without some new faces on the field and on the sideline, they're not going higher than that.