Annoying NFL Texts with Ian Rapoport: What are the Bengals THINKING?

There are few bright spots to an NFL team finishing with a losing record and missing the playoffs for a second-straight year, but one is you can count on your overly-reactionary owner to clean house and bring in a new staff to start anew.

Unless, of course, your team is the Bengals, whose owner Mike Brown looked at Marvin Lewis' record of 15 seasons without a playoff victory and ultimately decided: He's our guy!

In our weekly text exchange with NFL Network's Ian Rapoport, we started with the obvious question about the Bengals giving Lewis a two-year contract extension: What the hell are we missing?

Of course, not every owner is as patient as Brown, and that's probably a good thing for Rapoport, who makes his living chronicling the endless comings and goings of NFL coaches, especially this time of year. With the regular season now behinds us, and the playoffs beginning this weekend, it's fair to ask who might need to brighten up their Linkedin profile in the next little while.

The most surprising name in that group is Jon Gruden, who hasn't coached since he was fired by the Bucs after the 2008 season. There have been no shortage of options in the years since, but with Gruden seemingly content in his role as an analyst for "Monday Night Football", he never took the bait. Until now. Although though he hasn't officially been named coach of the Raiders, Rapoport has reported he is already started calling around to fill out his coaching staff.

Of course, there are still four games this weekend, and for those of us who can't commit to cementing ourselves to our living room couches for the whole thing, we've asked Ian for some guidance.