Cincinnati Bengals Head Coach Zac Taylor on Accountability, Regret and Criticism From Star Wide Receivers

Jay Morrison | Oct 7, 2024

Oct 6, 2024; Cincinnati, Ohio, USA; Cincinnati Bengals head coach Zac Taylor calls a play in the first half against the Baltimore Ravens at Paycor Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Katie Stratman-Imagn Images / Katie Stratman-Imagn Images

CINCINNATI – After having a night to sleep on the 41-38 overtime loss to the Baltimore Ravens and an ill-fated overtime possession, Cincinnati Bengals head coach Zac Taylor said he wouldn’t change a thing about his approach.

Ravens quarterback Lamar Jackson gifted the Bengals a chance to win the game by dropping the snap on the first possession in overtime, giving Joe Burrow and the Cincinnati offense the ball at the Baltimore 38-yard line.

The Bengals ran the ball on three consecutive plays to settle for an Evan McPherson 53-yard field goal attempt to try to win the game.

Holder Ryan Rehkow lost his handle on the ball, McPherson’s kick went wide left, and the Bengals lost. Again.

During his Monday afternoon news conference, Taylor said being conservative in that situation was the right decision.

“I’m very reflective on things that I can improve on,” Taylor said. “At the end of the day, the decision for me is we are in comfortable enough field-goal range for Evan, and I don’t want to do anything to disrupt that.

“And again, I’m accountable,” Taylor continued. “I know there’s probably a lot of different opinions on how that could go. But at the end of the day, that’s where it sits with me. You don’t want to take any sort of negative play.”

McPherson had made 14 consecutive field goals in the fourth quarter and overtime dating back to the 2023 season.

Five of them were at least 50 yards.

Long snapper Cal Adomitis hasn’t had an unplayable snap in the first 317 snaps of his career.

And holder Rehkow has had no holding issues during his rookie year.

“When I trust our kicker in that position to finish the game for us like he has countless (times) –  and I’m not putting the way that kick went on him by any means, but every situation is a little bit different,” Taylor said. “We’ve been in those situations before. We’ve been aggressive in throwing the ball and trying to close out games that way. Yesterday I felt that’s where it went. I always think about it a million times. What would I have done differently? I’m comfortable with where it ended.”

Not the loss, obviously.

Taylor said his comfort was in sending McPherson out to win the game with a 53-yard attempt.

But with the way Burrow was playing, why not put the ball in his hands to try to get closer?

“There’s some things he can’t control that can come up in those situations as well,” Taylor said. “We were in four-minute last week. We got a penalty that knocked us back 10 yards. At the end of the day, I know we can make that kick. We’re going to try to get as many yards as we can moving forward in the run game. It didn’t work in our favor.”

As for the comments from Ja'Marr Chase and Tee Higgins saying they thought the plays calls should have been more aggressive in overtime, Taylor brushed it off as competitive fire and the heat of the moment after a disappointing, last-second loss.

"It’s after the game. It’s emotional," Taylor said. "And those guys made every single play that came to them. They want the opportunity to finish the game off. That doesn’t bother me for one second. I know what those guys are made of. Those guys want to win. They’re upset we didn’t win. And they’re accountable for anything they can do differently.

That doesn’t bother me at all," Taylor continued. "I have to make decisions that I’ll take full blame for when they don’t go our way and we lose the game. That’s part of my job. That’s part of this profession. That’s what I love about it, to be honest with you. But again, I like that those guys play with emotion. They want to make the plays to win the game. And they don’t get opportunities, they’re frustrated by it. I’m fine with that."

While he was comfortable with the position he put the team in in the micro sense of that one possession, Taylor said he needs to do a better job in terms of the bigger picture with the team sitting 1-4 and teetering on the edge of irrelevance.

“I know what the noise is,” Taylor said. “We're 1-4, and so we're accountable for all that. It's not good enough. We have too much talent on this team to be in the position we've found ourselves in right now.

“We need to be the best version of ourselves, which we have not been yet,” he continued. “We've lost on a walk-off field goal now twice. We have to do more to take advantage of those opportunities. And I gotta put us in a better position. There's a lot of talent on the team, and as the coach, you've got to find ways to maximize that and make sure we're walking off with wins, and I haven't done a good enough job with that.”

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