Cincinnati Bengals head coach Zac Taylor sits on the cusp of dubious team history.
At 0-9, he risks matching Dave Shula’s putrid 0-10 start in 1993. The only chance at avoiding such a fate now rests on the results of a west coast trip to face the Oakland Raiders.
The outlook is bleak. Taylor’s side just came out of a bye and got dropped by Baltimore, 49-13. A.J. Green isn’t any closer to coming back. Unexpected names like Geno Atkins are now on the injury report. The roadtrip will be rookie Ryan Finley’s second NFL start. The front office cut linebacker Preston Brown but hasn’t made a corresponding move.
Taylor has said this is the toughest stretch the Bengals will face over the next 20 years. He isn’t far off.
But the questions surrounding the team change in complexity if he can’t avoid an 0-10 start. Taylor forever slotting himself next to Shula might be a stench he can’t ever remove.
Shula went 19-52 as a head coach over five years in Cincinnati as a key component of the lost decade. In 1993, his Bengals started 0-10 before finally getting a win on November 28 in a 16-10 stinker over the Los Angeles Raiders.
Under Shula’s command, the Bengals won five, three, three and seven games before the transitional year in 1996.
Shula’s 0-10 start morphed into winning three of six to close the year. Marvin Lewis’ terrible 2010 team lost 10 in a row in the middle of the schedule to finish 4-12. Feel free to throw in the dreadful Dick LeBeau-led 2002 campaign, a 2-14 effort with losing streaks of seven and six games in the same season.
Fair or not, Taylor’s 2019 campaign and debut as an NFL head coach now tracks dangerously close to these historically bad teams. It isn’t fully his fault, but the team is currently riding an 11-game skid from last year that ties a team record.
In Oakland, Taylor risks cementing a new losing streak record and joining the 0-10 club.
It’s easy to fall back on the claim Taylor is guaranteed another year or two to build the roster in his vision. But as the team keeps inching toward a one or two win total at max, it’s safe to wonder if Taylor and his staff will make it through the offseason.
After all, the last thing the Bengals can afford to do is slip fully into 90s mode, where stretches of six, seven, eight and sometimes even 10 straight losses in a row weren’t all that uncommon.
Draft positioning is important, but a win in Oakland might be even moreso.
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