My fear is that Mike Brown will look at this year and say it was a success and feel that no changes are needed for 2010. That would be a huge mistake.
An absolute "must change" for this team is its offensive coordinator. This team's offensive woes go beyond injuries, schemes and even seasons. This O has been woeful for 3 years now. Marvin will say that they got back to basics and decided to do one thing well: run the ball.
Well, OK, if you're going to be unimaginative and predictable then you'd better be flawless in that specialized area and the Bengals weren't. They still could not execute a boring playbook well. They led the league in offensive penalties. They jumped offsides, they held, they had delay of games...This all reflects on the OC. They have a lot of money tied up in offensive players. This O should be better.
On the passing side of the ball, Carson is locking onto one receiver way too much and Bratkowski did a horrible job "getting receivers open". Yesterday Sanchez looked at one receiver like you'd expect a rookie to do and generally he had some wide open guys to throw to. They threw some new plays at us. What new play did you see from the Bengals?
Far amd away this is the most important change for 2010 and if MB and Marvin don't see it let's hope Carson does. I hope Carson makes it loud and clear that he wants no part in a dink and dunk offense. That might be our only hope for change.