Choice to bring Henry back was owner’s, not coach’s

Cincinnati coach Marvin Lewis said twice in the last month he was not interested in bringing wide receiver/jailbait Chris Henry back to the team but owner Mike Brown overruled Lewis, signing Henry to a two-year deal announced Tuesday.

“At the end of the day the owner has the final say-so whether or not he wants to give a guy an opportunity,” Lewis is quoted as saying in the Cincinnati Enquirer. “Mike has wanted to give Chris this opportunity, and asked we do the best job we can do to prepare him …”

So Marvin Lewis is now stuck with a guy he doesn’t want on a team he apparently doesn’t have the authority to run as he sees fit. It’s being speculated in various media accounts throughout the Web that this might be the issue that ultimately splits Lewis and the Bengals. It’d be hard to blame the coach, who already reportedly was on the hot seat, for leaving the team, which he appeared a few years ago to be pulling out of  decades of dysfunction.

But since drafting David Pollack, whose career ended due to a neck injury, Henry, and Odell Thurman, a stud linebacker who was cut this offseason after having almost as many run-ins with the law as Henry, in 2005, this team has slowly spiraled downhill again.

It’s the guess here that the Bengals tumble further this season and Lewis takes a walk at the end of the season – if he makes it that far – and that this team heads back into the abyss for another extended period of bad, losing football.