Tag: Dave Shula

The debut season has fully gone off the rails.

Zac Taylor arrived in Cincinnati as an inexperienced coach inheriting a somewhat talented roster, the plan to avoid a full-blown rebuild.

But the rebuild simply won’t be denied.

With the Bengals’ 17-10 loss to the Oakland Raiders on Sunday, Taylor has tied the worst start to a season in franchise history at 0-10. The only other coach to hold this mark is Dave Shula, who finished his tenure in the Queen City with a 19-52 record.

While the problems didn’t start with Taylor — the Bengals have now lost 12 in a row dating back to last season — he’s in trouble.

Fittingly, Taylor’s chance to avoid setting a dubious record comes in Week 12 against the Pittsburgh Steelers. But his first stab at taking down the team’s most sworn of rivals was a 27-3 stinker.

Also somewhat fittingly, it was Taylor’s offense that didn’t hold up its end of the bargain in Oakland.

Taylor’s defense did just fine, holding the Raiders to 17 points and less than 400 total yards despite more than 35 minutes of possession. There were problems, but it was overall the best defensive performance of the season.

Taylor’s offense, not so much. New starter Ryan Finley completed 13 of 31 attempts for 115 yards. He fumbled early and threw an interception to seal the game late. The ground game gained 7.9 yards per carry … but only ran it 22 times. As a whole, the offense sputtered to 246 total yards and a 3 of 13 mark on third down.

It isn’t all on Taylor. Injuries have ravaged the roster. The front office isn’t exactly helping in that department. He’s having to speak for an absent front office atop everything else.

But if asked to dial up what an overwhelmed first-year coach might do if he’s struggling, this is it. Taylor’s playcalling isn’t good. His talent usage — which included just three targets for Tyler Boyd in a game decided by seven points, to name one example — is questionable. At some point one would think it could trend in a positive direction. Even Miami is winning games.

These Bengals aren’t. And while Taylor might unfathomably steer an incredible long-term turnaround over the next few years, he’s fittingly right next to Shula so far in the early stages of his tenure in Cincinnati.

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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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