“People thought I stayed in one place for a long time and they both exceeded it,” said Lewis, his last game another tight loss to Tomlin, 16-13, with another backup quarterback (Jeff Driskel) on a field goal with less than two minutes left.
When Lewis left the Bengals after that game in 2018, he was the longest-tenured African-American head coach in any sport. Tomlin leaves the Steelers with the same title.
Lewis only got him five times, but the series had drama good enough to binge. Five losses were to Ben Roethlisberger fourth-quarter comebacks. A dozen games were decided by seven points or fewer. Along the way, the Bengals swept the defending Super Bowl champion Steelers (remember the War of 18-12?), qualified for the playoffs and eliminated the Steelers on the same kick, and caught the Steelers during a wild fourth quarter in Pittsburgh to become the first AFC North team start a season 7-0.
“I only remember the ones we got by a field goal at the end,” Lewis said.
But if anyone knows why Tomlin stayed so long in Pittsburgh and Harbaugh in Baltimore, it is Lewis.
He broke into the league as the Steelers linebackers coach in the ’90s, when Dan Rooney owned the team before passing it on to son Art. During his last years in Baltimore, Lewis was there during the transition when Steve Bisciotti took ownership from Art Modell. The same dynamic was at work with the Brown and Blackburn families in Cincinnati.
“I think they respect the job coaches do. They understand. They’re in the trenches with the coaches,” Lewis said. “They’re in those battles with them. They understand the time and the energy and the effort. They respect that.
“And they know that every time you make a change, there are a lot of ramifications. Through the squad. Through the building. The choosing of players. What kind of players? There are going to be some guys lost in the shuffle. Players most importantly. They don’t fit into a new scheme, a new this, a new that. That can mean wasted resources. Draft picks and free agents are valuable when you spend the cap allocation for those guys … Just the respect for how things are done. The stability at the top makes it much easier for the coach and GM. Everybody knows they have to work together.”
Lewis admired Tomlin’s handling of players, and there were those occasional league meetings where they would talk about the management of it all. That was a Marvinism, too.