Scooby, I Think I Found a Clue

A clue?! (read that in Scooby's dog voice)

Yes, Scooby.  A clue.

A clue in my never-ending-search-even-though-I-already-know-the-answer for why Bob Bratkowski will hold the offensive coordinator job in Cincinnati for 13 years and likely more.  ESPN featured this article by Liz Merrill about Mike Zimmer as the lead on their homepage the other day.  Surprisingly for ESPN, but unsurprisingly for Liz Merrill, it is very good.

(long time WDR readers will remember Liz for her excellent feature ESPN article on the Bengals/Project Mayhem last season)

I covered here my general thoughts on Brat and why I think he continues to lead the offense but I did not know the following:

The Zimmers and Bratkowskis have a deep history together. In 1980, Mike caught the garter at Bob and Rebecca's wedding. Bob and Mike were assistants together at Missouri, then coached under Price at Weber State. Back then, the staff was very family oriented.

Price's daughter would often babysit for his assistants' young children. And the wives would often lean on each other in their times of solitude. It was a sorority of sorts, among a handful of women who advised and chuckled and knew things the rest of the world couldn't understand.

And this:

The Bratkowskis had Mike, Corri and Marki over for Thanksgiving (last year).  "I don't ever want him to feel like we're not in this with him," Rebecca Bratkowski says.

So clearly, now even I - hater of haters, second guesser of second guessers - can understand why Mike Brown chose personal over business when it came time to renew Brat's contract last season.  It was a move in part to keep supportive friends around for Mike Zimmer.

Seriously though, read the whole article.  There's tons of great stuff, like this part on how Zim casually dismisses his skin cancer diagnosis because he's a raging bad ass:

He was recently diagnosed with skin cancer and was advised to have surgery. Zimmer, 54, told his doctor that it would have to wait for a couple of weeks, when the Bengals returned from camp.  "It's nothing," he says. "It really isn't. It's what they call basal cell; it's not a melanoma."

Zimmer to cancer:  Your shit is weak.

Bottom line:  it looks like as long as Zim stays, Brat will stay too.  I'll just have to deal with it.

Comments

[TheCarlPickensClause]

I could be wrong, but I don't think that the Bengals renewed Bratkowski's contract, they just didn't terminate it in the middle of it's tenure.

[Sleeping With Bieniemy]

I was very much under the impression it expired after last year. I searched the interwebs but couldn't find anything more interesting than this:

http://www.bengals.com/news/article-1/Dating-Game/754a53c0-b1f7-4eee-92a8-0147175f53fc

The reason we wrote so much about getting rid of him, as I recall, was because you didn't even have to fire him this offseason. You could just tell him, hey, it's been ten years, we think it's time for a change so we're not renewing.

[Wyatt]

As long as Mikey Boy follows in his daddy's footsteps and promotes the Defensive Coordinator to Head Coach and not the Offensive Coordinator. In his case, not only would he be doing the right thing, he'd be outdoing his daddy, who improbably promoted Bill "Tiger" Johnson over Bill Walsh. I hope that made sense. It did in my head.