The Bengals are searching for a defensive coordinator. That alone is good news. It means that the front office realized that the last 5 games of the season don’t change the fact that Chuck Bresnahan did a lousy job.

This situation makes me think of what was being said about the hiring of Bresnahan when it happened. Here’s a story about the team’s reaction at the time, and what Bresnahan had to say about it during his first few days on the job. All in all, these two articles make it seem like Bresnahan was never a no-doubter.

Everyone assumes that once a team hires a coach with a reputation as being great on one side of the ball, like Marvin Lewis and Tony Dungy on defense, Brian Billick and Jon Gruden on offense, that their team will immediately take on those traits. But that rarely seems to be the case, as the Ravens of Billick (now fired) and the Bengals are the most glaring examples.

One thing that this situation reminds me of is Barry Sonnenfeld. Forgive me for going pretty far off the gridiron here, but Barry Sonnenfeld is a great movie director who used to be a great cinematographer/director of photography (DP). As a director, he’s done Men In Black, Get Shorty and The Addams Family. As a DP, he did Big, When Harry Met Sally… and a lot of Coen brothers movies like Raising Arizona and Miller’s Crossing.

This quote is from an interview he did with UGO.com.

UGO: How do you work with cinematographers now?

BARRY: Well when I became a director, the first movie I directed was The Addams Family. I looked at all the cinematographers that had tried to be directors. Gordon Willis did Windows, John Alonzo did FM; Bill Fraker did Legend of the Lone Ranger. These are all brilliant cinematographers and none of them made a successful transition. What I noticed about them in all those cases is they took their camera operator and made them the DP, which meant that they don't want to give up being a DP. I felt that if I was to be a successful director then I had to hire a DP that was so good and was so much better than me that I wouldn't dare tell them how to light. So I hired Owen Roizman. I still design the shots but I didn't want to do anything with the lighting. To this day I always hire really good cameramen for that reason.

To me, Marvin needs to find a defensive coordinator that’s great, and let that person do his job. Don’t try to find someone who’s going to implement what Marvin thinks we should be doing. Find someone who’s going to do his own thing, and do it great.

Apparently, the Ravens won’t let the Bengals interview Rex Ryan, but he’s the kind of candidate I’d like to see. Someone who other teams want to hire as a head coach. Someone who people talk about how clever his schemes are. Someone who gets the most out of the players he has, and identifies the right players to fit the system.

Also, Tim Lewis of Carolina isn’t being allowed to interview with the Bengals.

So apparently the names we’re considering are Kevin Coyle, our current secondary coach, and Mike Zimmer, the defensive coordinator for the Atlanta Falcons. I hope the list is bigger than two.

And I hope they’re not afraid to hire someone with a name we don’t recognize, but who we’ll be afraid of losing to another team in a few years.