Lewis Tougher policy good for league

PHOENIX -- A day after NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell detailed his stricter personal conduct plan, Bengals coach Marvin Lewis was peppered with questions from national media about his team's misbehavior.

Sitting at a table at the annual AFC coaches' breakfast, part of the league annual meeting, Lewis was asked for his thoughts on Goodell's plan.

"Your team is kind of the poster child, right?" a New York writer asked Lewis.

"You mean the '06 team?" Lewis said.

"It's a perception you don't want to have. It's a reaction to one particular player who had a run of bad acts, selfish acts, and I don't think it's a fair image for the entire thing. But anything that goes wrong, any particular breaking of the law, social law, none of it's good. I think, hopefully, we are all looking at the same thing. I think the only thing that affects this is play time. We have to combine a couple of things (play time, fines). You have to know coming in that the action is going to be quick and it's going to get you."

Bengals wide receiver Chris Henry was arrested four times between December 2005 and June 2006.

In a wide-ranging hour-long conversation, Lewis also said:

-- Media forecasts of the Bengals picking defensive players in Rounds 1 and 2 of the NFL draft are "fair and accurate."

-- The offseason program, which will begin Monday, was overhauled because "for four years, it has not been good enough. (Players) are excited about it. They were disappointed (with losing the last three games in a row and missing the playoffs.) They were embarrassed with how they finished."

-- That he views the Bengals as the "last team" in the four-team division, looking up at the other three teams ahead of them. Asked at least three times to analyze the landscape of the AFC North, especially with the loss of Bill Cowher as Steelers coach and the arrival of Mike Tomlin, Lewis wouldn't bite, other than to say every team has tried to improve itself in the offseason.

-- The "window" for the Bengals to compete to win the division will not be allowed to close. "We're not going to allow the team to get old," he said.

-- David Pollack continues to make progress and has said he wants to play football again and sees his return most probable as a defensive end instead of a linebacker. Pollack suffered a C6 vertebra fracture and underwent surgery.