How Much is Zac Taylor to Blame?

 It’s a very strange and unfulfilling study, these Bengals. They don’t warrant attention at all, really. They are the most gray of grays, the personality of an operator recording.  They are the league’s time and downtown temperature. They barely exist to most people. 

And yet, because of some kind of existential craving tied to proximity and tribalism, I guess, I still badly want them to win a championship. It’s so dumb.

The owner of the team is categorically hated by his city. Fans have to look past the flimsy discount façade of the organization and forget that they deplore the rich frogman in the owner’s box in order to enjoy the game at all. The embarrassment and constant inferiority has left deep, perhaps permanent scars on the city itself. 

I could have written that in 1995 and it would apply as well as it does today in the midst of the darkest stretch ever for a Bengals fan. Dave Shula and Bruce Coslet were not good coaches. Dick LeBeau was a terrible head coach. Marvin was a decent coach—a seeming godsend when he first arrived—but he was Marvin for so long that he over-Marvined his Marvin and he seemed to just slowly crater inward over time. It took Mike Brown 17 years move to move on from him and he won nothing of consequence. So before we get to Zac Taylor, lets all remember that the poison starts in the roots and not in the leaves (I don’t know if that is horticulturally true but it sounds cool so we’re going with it). 

Let’s do the positives first: Joe Burrow was humming in that Zac Taylor offense. They went with empty backfields more than any other team because Burrow liked it and it was working. The few weeks prior to the bye week was the best I’ve seen the offense consistently operate since 2015. Everyone except for A.J. Green was getting better as a player in the Zac Taylor system. 

I find the criticism of him throwing too often a bit basic, and those that suggest that the system was designed for Burrow to have the deep dropbacks with lots of vertical routes simply didn’t watch the games. The passes over the course of the year became quick, short ones that were almost like runs in a lot of instances. If the coach is truly trying to win each game this season, then he’s going to call plays that garner that best proven results. If it’s an organizational decision that winning this season doesn't matter, then Taylor should have limited Burrow’s attempts to 20 or less and lose with an ineffective ground game. You can’t have it both ways. 

Similarly, the claim that Burrow would succeed in any offensive system is simply not true. We have seen plenty of examples of great quarterbacks limited by a poor fit with the scheme they had to play within. He likes Zac Taylor’s offense and he looks good in it when he isn’t crumpled on the ground. The offensive concepts behind the plays called were designed to be quick decisions that were intended to protect the quarterback, but the offensive line was so bad that Burrow was getting hit all the time anyway.

Which leads to the question: what is Zac Taylor’s place within the organization?

Not all head coaches are the same. Some are de facto general managers, some are glorified hype men that are leader-of-men types, and some are basically coordinators with an extra assistant at their disposal. Taylor strikes me as the last guy. I don’t know how much sway he has in player acquisition. The whole world wanted Cincinnati to invest money in an offensive line and they didn’t. Whether any high-level lineman wanted to come here or not, I don’t know, but all they came up with was a veteran backup guard that has played maybe a couple of quarters this year. Taylor is not the general manager. The owner is the general manager. When he signs or doesn’t sign a player, he’s playing with his own money. Football decisions are overridden by cost-effective ones and the play on the field suffers. It’s been this way for eons, so I think blaming Taylor for not acquiring a better line in the offseason is misplaced. 

Okay, now the bad. 

The offensive line coach Jim Turner is a known asshole and the results from the lines he’s coached have been mixed at best. He clearly is a man of favorites and works to alienate those who don’t fall into that category. He’s a bully and he’s bad for the culture of the team.

If Jim Turner is Zac Taylor’s boy, and Taylor is allowing his employment despite a complete shit-show of a performance on Sundays and a question mark for the whole team dynamic, then he is allowing his stubborn loyalty to lose games and lose the faith of his players. To witness a perfect quarterback prospect writhe around on the ground, holding his knee like we had all seen in our head as soon as he was drafted, is hard to defend. But when your offensive line coach is a guy with a reputation for questionable technique points and flat-out bullying, you can no longer stick with a colleague like that. Zac Taylor has to throw Jim Turner under the bus to save his own job. 

Speaking of that bus, there is something weird going on with this team’s defense. There was obviously a decision made over the past few months that veteran players on defense are no longer a commodity. There is a complete overhaul happening there that doesn’t include guys like Geno Atkins and there is clearly some tension there. The Sports Illustrated article about the bad team culture was about the veterans not getting any explanation on why their playing time has been cut. The strangest angle to all of this is that the Bengals appear wildly inept at getting real, tangible pressure on the quarterback, but they keep the two greatest Bengal pass rushers this century mostly on the bench, or worse, traded away. Hard to do worse than 13 sacks as a team.

The worst-case scenario is that Taylor is a know-it-all that can’t be told that his coaching staff might need changed, or, that he’s a coward that doesn’t want to create more problems by rocking an already stormy boat. Externally, he’s facing a lot of heat sporting a .143 winning percentage over two seasons. Internally, he may already know he’s safe. Either way, I think he needs to admit that a lot of what has gone on this season is unacceptable. There should be a Year 3 in the Zac Taylor regime but it comes with a 10-win price tag that ends in termination if not met. Those would be my terms, but I don't own the Burger King of the NFL.