Marvin Lewis entered the 2014 season as head coach of the Bengals with his defensive back room sitting at a kind of emotional crossroads. One of his most important players was young but too coddled by his collegiate experience and had yet to break out in the NFL. Another was a veteran whose play needed to fall in line schematically, or else he’d run the risk of washing out of the NFL altogether.
This represented the totality of what the defensive back room offers to those talented enough to master its nuances: a kind of microcosm of the game’s most skilled yet also most difficult-to-reach players. Coaching this group is a job that requires the ability to create a perfectionist who is psychologically pliable enough to understand that a good pass defender can do everything flawlessly but still surrender a catch.
