For many outside of the Bengals organization, the presence of Andy Dalton as the team’s starting quarterback is something working against the team’s efforts to move from making in the playoffs to winning in the playoffs.
Coach Marvin Lewis has never been part of that group and he isn’t about to join in 2015. During an interview at the Senior Bowl practices on Wednesday, Lewis made it clear that he’s not into discussions of different quarterbacks. He said there are about “25 teams that would take [Dalton] in a heartbeat” and that the team won’t bring in competition for Dalton because quarterback competitions don’t make teams better.
“There’s no time for that,” Lewis said, via the Cincinnati Enquirer. “We have no problem with Andy Dalton as our quarterback. We don’t have time to waste time with another quarterback. The quarterback competition: Where has it worked? It doesn’t get you wins. … Fortunately, somehow I’ve got the right little thing on my shoulder that says, ‘Don’t get into a quarterback controversy.’”
It’s certainly a different take than we hear from some teams when it comes to having competition at every position, although the eternal quest to find quarterbacks in the NFL offers support for Lewis’s belief that time would be better spent working with Dalton than splitting things up in the offseason. That said, the Bengals have had four years to work with Dalton at this point and the results have been consistent enough that it’s hard to recommend a bet on massive improvement for the 2015 season.