Is Cincinnati Bengals head coach Zac Taylor on the hot seat?
One would think so after the team has flopped, wasting an MVP-caliber year from Joe Burrow, who has put the team on notice multiple times about what he expects for the rest of the season.
But these are the Bengals, so it’s easy to see staff changes under Taylor and nothing else.
And yet, that won’t stop potential head coaches from asking around about whether the Bengals job might become available, as reported recently by ESPN’s Jeremy Fowler:
This is the time of year when people are trying to figure out which rumors are true and which surprise job will open. For example, I’ve had multiple coaches in the league text me this week about the Bengals job, wondering if Zac Taylor is on the hot seat. Not sure I see that, given some of the goodwill Taylor has built up there and owner Mike Brown’s propensity for cost control (Taylor has two more years left on his deal). But the next month will be about deciphering what’s real and what’s not. And perhaps Taylor will make staff changes there.
And that right there is the problem for the Bengals — the job is a super, super attractive one. Burrow. Ja’Marr Chase. An offense that should be good all the time and a defense that the coach could get a blank check to rebuild.
Normally, the conservative Bengals might stick it out with Taylor no matter how badly they finish this year. But the level of replacement candidates will never be higher, both for first-time coaches and veterans, perhaps all the way up to Bill Belichick.
That’s why, if the Bengals even so much as think about firing Taylor as a possibility and starting over around Burrow, they probably just should.
Again, these are the Bengals, so swapping out the head coach doesn’t guarantee much if someone like Duke Tobin doesn’t receive major changes after his own struggles as a roster-builder and/or the front office doesn’t modernize the way it does contracts and overall team management.
But the report just goes to show how attractive the job would be, especially compared to all of the other potential openings.
Who might some of these coaches asking about jobs be? We ranked the top candidates to replace Zac Taylor after the team’s latest loss.
