By the time Zac Taylor boarded for the short flight back to Cincinnati, the Bengals coach had cooled off a bit. The edge he carried in the immediacy of postgame, over the potential coin tosses and neutral sites catering to other teams but not his, and the way the group of players he’s proud of has been regarded, has dissipated a bit.
What hadn’t, though—and won’t—was the basis for all of it.
“I mean, we’ve got a great team,” Taylor told me. “And it really doesn’t matter how people view us or what they think of us or if we’re underdogs. None of that. We know we belong in these games we’re playing in, and we’ve got confidence in each other, and that’s the only thing we care about right now.”
