Marvin Lewis won’t be a lame duck this season.
The Bengals extended their head coach’s contract through the 2015 season last year and they’ve elected to take the same approach with Lewis’s contract heading this year as well. The team announced on Wednesday that they have extended Lewis’s deal through the 2016 season, which would be his 14th year on the job in Cincinnati. Lewis has won more games than any other coach in the history of the franchise and his .526 winning percentage ranks second behind Forrest Gregg.
None of Lewis’s 100 wins as the Bengals coach have come in the postseason, where Lewis’s teams have gone 0-6 during his tenure. The last four of those losses have come in the last four years as the Bengals have continually advanced to the playoffs and then found themselves on the wrong end of convincing victories by their opponents.
Those six trips to the playoffs are almost as many as the Bengals managed in their entire pre-Lewis existence, so it’s not that hard to understand why the team has stayed in the Lewis business despite his failure to lead the team on a deep postseason run. Now he has a little bit of security as he tries to change their playoff luck in what the team hopes will be a lucky 13th season at the helm.