Marvin Lewis
INDIANAPOLIS — Taking a break from his stint on NFL Network this week at the Super Bowl, Bengals head coach Marvin Lewis said Wednesday he’s still searching for a secondary coach to replace Kevin Coyle while working on the logistics for the new training camp at Paul Brown Stadium.
Lewis said he’ll consider Rod Woodson, the Pro Football Hall of Famer that was a coaching intern at the 2010 Bengals training camp before he worked for the Raiders last season.
“Some coaches come up as coaches throughout, some coaches were players in the NFL with experience that way,” Lewis said. “It’s a matter of getting the right fit with our staff to work with (coordinator) Mike Zimmer and the rest of the coaches. That’s why we’re kind of taking the time to do due diligence and making sure the fit is right.”
Lewis said the Bengals are still trying to decide if they’ll keep the same structure of secondary coach with an assistant. Paul Guenther is currently the assistant secondary coach and while it’s expected he’ll replace Jeff FitzGerald as linebackers coach, Lewis said he’ll keep things flexible with the possibility of Guenther replacing Coyle and reassigning the assistant DB coach to another spot.
However it shakes down, Lewis said he’d like to have things intact before the Feb. 22-26 scouting combine.
Lewis plans to put both rookies and veterans in a to-be-determined downtown hotel for training camp, but he says things are still in planning mode.
“I have no vets,” Lewis said. “The reason you stay in a hotel is to protect your players from other people. People that keep them up, or get them sick, or (they) get sick in the middle of the night.”
Lewis is relying on his Game Day experiences with players that get sick in the middle of the night before a game but have been ready for kickoff because of trainers and doctors at the ready.
“We want to make sure we can protect our players that way (at training camp),” Lewis said.
Lewis said he’ll probably have no practices in the morning and night practices may be earlier than 7 p.m. It sounds like there’ll be plenty of 3-5, or even 2-4 p.m. practices. Still to be worked out, too, is how many practices on the FieldTurf in the stadium and how many across the street on the grass fields where temporary seating is going to have to be used.
Lewis also said with more down time at night, he'll be looking to add more structured events that can help with bonding, such as off-campus team excursions.
