Argument in favor of breaking up with Zac Taylor
In the improbable event that things go wrong and Zac Taylor loses his job, how can the franchise defend its choice?
You may recall the opening line of our argument for Zach Taylor to return as head coach of the Cincinnati Bengals for the upcoming season if you have already read it:
If the Bengals defeat the Browns tomorrow, their record would be 2-14. Even though they had a fantastic season finale, this would tie them for the lowest record in team history with the Bengals of 2002.
Conversely, a defeat would leave them with the poorest record in the 52-year history of the team. Regardless of perspective, this season can be considered an objective failure.
Whoa. On Black Monday, Zac Taylor’s name appears, and the Bengals are back at the bottom. How do they defend this?
Giving a signal of incapacity and intolerance
The Bengals lost a few games from the previous campaign despite their roster not changing nearly as much as the coaching staff did this past winter.
Is this evidence of the roster’s actual lack of quality or the coaching staff’s lack of preparation? Depending on who you ask, that could mean different things, but let’s not lose sight of the expectation that Taylor will expressly enter this year.
Toward the end of Marvin Lewis’s career, there was a persistent grievance over some players’ blatant underutilization and lack of progress.
Has Taylor progressed in these areas in any noticeable way? Giovani Bernard, Tyler Eifert, and C.J.
Uzomah all had full seasons with him (all three inked new contracts in the winter), but none of them had much of an impact this season.
Taylor was brought in to infuse offensive creativity into a team that showed promise on that end of the field. A.J.
Green’s absence proved to be a major hindrance, but the extent of their regression from last season outweighed Green’s overall contribution to this offense.
Rather of making the most of his potential, Andy Dalton had his poorest season to date. Joe Mixon needed nine games to accumulate 400 rushing yards. The unit needed fifteen weeks to score more than twenty-three points. And so the list continues.
Taylor performed admirably as an offensive play-caller and first-year coach, but he was also overmatched.
Although it is true that the experienced quarterback, Dalton, is being let go this offseason, the front office could send a strong message to the league—which still remembers the team that signed Lewis for a decade and a half—if they were to relieve Taylor of his responsibilities in order to set expectations.
The necessity of experienced leadership
Taylor was not just from a different generation than Lewis, but he also had a different coaching experience.
When combined with one of the league’s youngest rosters, inexperience turned from a potential problem to a serious one very soon.
In one-score games, going 0–8 denotes a significant amount of bad luck, but it can also indicate a lack of learned leadership from the most crucial positions.
This season, the Bengals had numerous opportunities to win, but they have always managed to come up short.
Does Taylor bear all of this? No, but when has that ever prevented someone from accusing the head coach of being at fault for this particular issue?
Taylor’s young charm was appealing since it offered a striking contrast to the former head coach. The Los Angeles Rams were drawn to Sean McVay because of that, but the outcome was success right away.
It seems reckless to directly compare the organizational philosophies of the Bengals and Rams, but if the Bengals decide to pursue a more experienced candidate after Taylor is burnt, they will have a disagreement.
You’re deluding yourself if you believe that anyone other than Joe Burrow is the front-runner to be selected by the Bengals with the first overall pick in the 2020 NFL Draft.
Burrow will be the first player off the board and the newest member of the Bengals if all goes according to plan. Of course, the process will continue and other elite players will be interviewed and worked out.
The only obvious concern with Burrow, one of the clearest quarterback prospects in a while, is his potential for underwhelming success in a system not led by Joe Brady.
Brady was brought in by LSU from the New Orleans Saints to serve as the passing game coordinator and receivers coach.
Although it’s often believed that Brady only moved the Saints’ offensive 80 miles to the northwest to Baton Rouge, the reality is that he actually only moved LSU into the twenty-first century. Burrow stood to gain the most, and others believe that their partnership is designed to last.
Reexamining the Kliff Kingsbury acquisition, the Arizona Cardinals took a leap of faith in an offensive mastermind and relied on his belief in a quarterback he had experience with.
Despite their lackluster tenure at Texas Tech, Kingsbury and Kyler Murray were instrumental in elevating the Cardinals’ offense from 32nd in Football Outsiders’ DVOA measure in 2018 to 12th this year.
Similar to how the Cardinals fired first-year Steve Wilks last summer, the criticism of Taylor’s release after just one season might be swiftly dispelled if Burrow and Brady are paired in Cincinnati. However, the error margin will be just as little as it was in Arizona.
Although there aren’t quite as many arguments in favor of keeping Taylor, given how awful the Bengals ended up playing this season, all options are theoretically open.
The only thing we can confidently wager on is Taylor sticking put and him drafting Burrow; everything else is out in the air.
