Despite ending the season with a string of victories, Zac Taylor’s Cincinnati Bengals did not qualify for the playoffs. They failed even though the team was home to this season’s leaders in passing yards (Joe Burrow), receiving yards (Ja’Marr Chase), and sacks (Trey Hendrickson). The 9-8 finish, for two seasons in a row that too, is indicative of underlying problems, said former star Andrew Whitworth, adding that Zac has to make proactive changes to put an end to this streaky run of form.
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The Bengals made poor starts in both the 23-24 and 24-25 seasons. Taylor’s men won just two of their first five games in 23-24, and only one in 24-25. As per Whitworth, the host of the Fitz & Whit podcast, the Bengals have too much quality in their ranks to make bad starts like these.
“I think it’s a great finish. But at some point, you’ve got to sit there as Zac Taylor and say, how do we fix the last three straight seasons of how we’ve started the year? Because, yes, all these things are positive, great finish guys, that’s awesome… [but] for the last three straight years, you’ve been terrible to start the season,” said Whitworth.
The question now is, how does Taylor address this issue? While the podcast host didn’t have a blueprint for the Bengals HC, he did put forth some points.
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Whitworth urged the HC to reprogram preseason OTAs and minicamps to start with. He also suggested that Taylor should be willing to change his approach in the initial games of the season.
“You got to adjust camp. You got to adjust your philosophy in the first few weeks. Whatever that is, you’ve got to do something to address these issues because it cannot be the narrative again for this team… Once you start making those changes, they gotta work because then it starts to fall back on you. You run out of people to point the finger at,” added Whitworth.
Next season would indeed be a do-or-die situation for Taylor. For a team of the Bengals’ stature and talent pool, going two seasons without playoffs is unacceptable. The Bengals HC better prepare his team for a rousing start, avoiding the mistakes from the past two seasons.
