Zac Taylor’s bold decision comes as no surprise when considering his own job security
Taylor and the Bengals will look for answers over the bye week.
Cincinnati Bengals head coach Zac Taylor announced Monday afternoon he will not make any coaching changes during the team’s bye week.
“No, I believe in these guys absolutely,” Taylor told reporters during his Monday presser. “And so we’ll continue to work through it and find solutions.”
Cincinnati is coming off a second consecutive loss in which the defense was objectively atrocious. The Bengals allowed 47 points, including a 58-yard touchdown in the final 25 seconds, in a devastating defeat to the Chicago Bears.
Such a day could realistically warrant changes being made for the sake of sparking a second-half surge from that side of the ball. The bye is an optimal time for radical changes such as firing defensive coordinator Al Golden as there’s an extra week to handle an in-house transition.
Taylor says he believes in Golden and his assistants, but there’s another reason why changes aren’t coming at this juncture.
Zac Taylor needs to hold on to Al Golden for as long as possible
It’s no secret why the Bengals are struggling to find wins right now. Joe Flacco may’ve provided needed stability for the offense at quarterback, but their defense is by far the worst in the NFL after nine weeks, and it’s reaching historic levels of bad.
Firing the DC sounds like a logical step to take, but Taylor can’t do that without weakening his own foothold within the club.
Golden was hired in January by Taylor after his predecessor, Lou Anarumo, headlined the list of firings Taylor made following the 2024 season. Cincinnati failed to reach the playoffs primarily because of defensive ineptitude, and Anarumo’s coaching and decision-making was blamed as a result.
Taylor was given the chance to reset the defensive coaching staff underneath him and landed on Golden as the guy to take over. Golden’s potential success would be Taylor’s success, just as his potential failure would be.
Firing Golden now, just nine weeks into the season, would be admitting failure on a cataclysmic level. It would be so bad, that Taylor’s own job security would have to be impacted. A head coach who specializes in running the offense can pin the team’s shortcomings on the defense once and survive. To do it again within one calendar year would be egregious to the point where the front office would have to question his ability to do the job entirely.
By protecting and vouching for Golden, Taylor is also protecting himself.
“He’s a great football coach,” Taylor said of Golden. “He’s doing everything he can to uncover every single stone to make us play better. I mean, we’re all sick for the way that these games are gone, him probably as much as anybody else on on this planet. And so I trust in him, trust in his staff, that we’re going to keep working and get all these guys on the same page, execute at a high level, and be good defense going forward.”
Taylor needs to be right, or else both he and Golden could be gone in a couple months.
This article was originally published on A to Z Sports Cincinnati Bengals, as Zac Taylor’s bold decision comes as no surprise when considering his own job security.
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