Doc: Marvin Lewis vows to 'walk away' with Bengals' Super Bowl win

Marvin Lewis has a vision involving the Super Bowl, Mike Brown, a trophy presentation and a stroll into the sunset. In that order. Lewis doesn’t say it will happen this year. He doesn’t say it won’t. He does say he’s not joking about the sunset.

“I want to hand Mike the trophy, then just walk away,’’ the Bengals coach declared at the team’s annual Weenie Roast And Mock Turtle Soupfest, also known as the pre-training camp media day.

Easier said than done, on all counts. Lewis swears he could walk away. Brown and Lewis swear that this could be the Bengals' year.

“We’re a pretty good team. I think we can give a good account of ourselves,’’ Brown said, in his formal and delicate way. No one else speaks quite like Mike. When someone asked him about the Bengals playoff drought, Brown said, “We haven’t driven the nail home. It doesn’t please me.’’

Lewis made it simpler: “We’re good enough, but we have to play good enough.’’

They are good enough. This team is as good as any in the Marvin Era, with apologies to the Class of 2005. That team had as much talent, but too much of it was raw and selfish. This team is full of men.

It’s also guided by two men who started out tolerating one another, grew to understand each other and now exist in a genuine state of mutual fondness. “Very close,’’ says Lewis. “We talk literally daily. I know what’s important to him, he knows what’s important to me.

“Not (about) players, not necessarily football. The evolution of the building, the transition we’ve made.’’

Lewis has been patient with Brown, always hopeful that his owner would stop running the team like it was 1965. Brown was patient with Lewis after 4-12 in 2010. Lewis has been rewarded with upgrades to the facilities and concessions on little things, such as traveling to West Coast games on early Friday mornings. Brown has been rewarded with a coach who has developed an organization that Brown can trust.

“I used to do all this,’’ Lewis recalled Brown saying to him, not long ago.

“Yeah,’’ Lewis replied. “But you shouldn’t have had to.’’

Once the laugh track of the NFL, the Bengals' organization is now thought of highly enough, good veterans want to play here. In the case of Michael Johnson, good veterans want to return here.

Brown will be 80 on Aug. 10. He is a vibrant 80, still witty and with it. When a TV type asked him to button his sport coat before an interview, Brown glanced at his belly and said, “I wish I could.’’

He has always been a very good man. Now, he’s become a very good owner, partly because his role in the day-to-day has been passed to his daughter, Katie Blackburn, and her husband Troy. Said Lewis, “He’s not as in touch with the money these guys make these days. But that’s OK. He just lets Katie and Troy work through that. He’s learned to pull back. He’s still abreast of it, but he’s not in depth in it like he used to be.’’

Years ago, when Lewis would speak empathetically of Brown, I passed it off as PC sheen, from a coach not nearly as job-secure as he is now. Now, it’s wholly genuine.

“He loves the players. He really can’t recognize them much anymore. He always asks me, ‘Who is that?’

“He just wants to win. There’s a lot of owners that want to win, but not a lot of owners who spend seven days a week worrying about it. They have other interests. He doesn’t have any other interests.

“Katie and Troy take vacation. Duke (personnel guru Tobin) takes vacation. Mike’s here.’’

I asked Brown what a championship ring would mean to him, at age 80.

“It would mean a lot,’’ he said. “I haven’t managed that. It’s unfinished work, if you will. It would make a nice entry on my gravestone.’’

In 2003, Lewis’ first season here, the Bengals beat the 9-0 Kansas City Chiefs at PBS. After the game, a tearful Lewis handed the game ball to Brown. A repeat, at the Super Bowl?

“It would be the most tremendous feeling,’’ said Lewis. “I told Brian Billick that about Art Modell in 1999’’ when Lewis was Billick’s defensive coordinator on a Super Bowl-winning team in Baltimore. “That’s (Modell’s) baby. To see his face up on that podium, with that trophy, wow. It would be the same with Mike.’’

And you’d retire?

Lewis smiled. That’s it. Just smiled.