Is Marvin Lewis leaving the Bengals after 15 seasons?

After 15 seasons as the head coach of the Cincinnati Bengals, Marvin Lewis will call it quits after this season, according to ESPN’s Adam Schefter. He’s leaving to pursue other opportunities, either another head coaching job or working in the front office somewhere else.

Well, this got interesting. After Sunday’s blowout loss to the Vikings, Lewis pushed back on the report that he was leaving the Bengals after the season. Asked if the report was accurate, Lewis said that it was not.

That begs the question of who put it out there in the first place. Could it have been a team source, ushering Lewis along rather than fire him? An agent getting ahead of themselves to telegraph that Lewis would be available for potential job openings?

Or could it have been Lewis denying the report because of how it might affect his players with two games left to play?

He was asked about that after the game, and the answer was very Marvin Lewis.

Fifteen seasons is nearly an eternity in NFL coaching circles. He’s the longest tenured head coach in Bengals history. Lewis also has another distinction, a more dubious one: His seven postseason losses are the most of any NFL head coach who has never won a playoff game.

With the Bengals’ roster in need of serious upgrade and his best assistants having been picked up for coaching jobs elsewhere over the last few seasons, Lewis was looking at more muddling along in Cincinnati. He also wasn’t very popular with fans there anymore.

After last week’s one-sided loss to the Bears and an ugly Monday night loss to the Steelers the week before that, frustrations are running high among Bengals fans.

Lewis was always deeply involved in personnel decisions for the Bengals, from the scouting process through selection and signings. Both Schefter and the NFL Network’s Ian Rapoport suggested Sunday morning that Lewis could be looking for a general manager role with another team. The possibility of him taking another head coaching job remains as well.

Another possibility is as a senior coaching advisor to one of his former assistants, possibly Mike Zimmer in Minnesota.

Simple, it’s housecleaning time. Lewis’ contract was up after this season, and so are those of most of his assistants.

The only question now is how far afield Bengals owner Mike Brown would be willing to go. Over the years, Brown has prioritized familiarity. Lewis survived while most head coaches would have been fired for seven playoff appearances and no wins.

As Rapoport suggested above, Simmons would fit the bill based on an existing relationship with Brown and the team. Defensive coordinator Paul Guenther’s name has come up as a potential head coaching candidate in the past. The Bengals blocked him from interviewing for the same job in Washington in January, but this is the last year on his contract.

Cincy Jungle recently ran down a list of potential replacements for the Bengals head coaching job.