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Ben Baby, ESPN Staff WriterOct 7, 2024, 05:08 PM ET
- Ben Baby covers the Cincinnati Bengals for ESPN. He joined the company in July 2019. Prior to ESPN, he worked for various newspapers in Texas, most recently at The Dallas Morning News where he covered college sports. He provides daily coverage of the Bengals for ESPN.com, while making appearances on SportsCenter, ESPN’s NFL shows and ESPN Radio programs. A native of Grapevine, Texas, he graduated from the University of North Texas with a bachelor’s degree in journalism. He is an adjunct journalism professor at Southern Methodist University and a member of the Asian American Journalists Association (AAJA).
CINCINNATI — Every part of the Cincinnati Bengals has played a role in the team’s sluggish start. Zac Taylor said that includes him.
On Monday, the coach took accountability for the team’s 1-4 start and said the record isn’t indicative of the quality on the roster.
“I got to put us in a better position, really,” Taylor said. “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.”
Cincinnati entered the year with aspirations that it could regain its status as AFC contenders. After winning a conference championship in 2021 and playing in the game again in 2022, the Bengals missed the postseason last year after quarterback Joe Burrow suffered a season-ending wrist injury.
As this season has progressed, Burrow has settled into his best form of his career. He threw a career-high five touchdowns in Sunday’s 41-38 loss to the Ravens but also had a late interception that led to the game-tying field goal that forced overtime. Through Week 5, Burrow is second in Total QBR, trailing only quarterback Josh Allen.
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“We’re not a championship-level team right now,” Burrow said after Sunday’s loss. “We’re not. I like to think that we’ll come back and improve throughout the season to get to that point. But right now we’re not, and we have to get better.”
Taylor stood by his decision to not be more aggressive in overtime after linebacker Germaine Pratt recovered a fumbled shotgun snap by Ravens quarterback Lamar Jackson. Cincinnati ran three straight rushing plays before kicker Evan McPherson missed a 53-yard field goal that was altered by a poor hold by rookie Ryan Rehkow.
After the game, wide receivers Tee Higgins and Ja’Marr Chase, who combined for 276 yards and four touchdowns, said they would have liked more aggressiveness in that situation. Taylor reiterated his point from Sunday in that the risk of taking a negative play that would have pushed the Bengals out of field goal range was too high. And in terms of the opinions from Higgins and Chase, Taylor had no qualms with the opinions from his star receivers.
“That doesn’t bother me at all,” Taylor said. “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.”
The Bengals will have an opportunity to rebuild their playoff hopes Sunday with a game against the New York Giants (2-3), a team coming off a win over the Seattle Seahawks in Week 5. When it comes to finding changes to address the lack of wins, Taylor pointed to a weekly evaluation of the team’s operation and said “everything is on the table” as Cincinnati tries to snap out of its midseason funk.
“You’ve got to be able to trust that we spend every second of every day trying to find a way to get our win,” Taylor said. “Because we’re disappointed, everyone’s disappointed. There’s more out there that we should have taken at this point. And I’m accountable that I haven’t gotten that done.”
