Everyone wants blood. They want heads to roll. Somebody must be fired to compensate for losses.
That’s true in Cincinnati. That’s true in the NFL. That’s true across all sports.
There has not been a game I’ve covered, including the first preseason game after the Super Bowl, where a fan hasn’t jumped into my social media mentions ranting for Bengals coach Zac Taylor to be fired.
This is America.
Yelling for firings is as much a part of fan culture as buying a jersey.
That’s understandable and reasonable, and fans have every right to express their fandom through frustration when teams don’t live up to expectations. More importantly, they should express anger when teams don’t show proper respect to the time, energy and money fans dedicate to the product.
That doesn’t mean firing everyone is the right answer.
That’s the case with the Bengals right now.
Continuity announced with Taylor and director of player personnel Duke Tobin by team president Mike Brown on Monday actually gives the team the best chance at a redemptive run in 2026.
Often, firings are needed. You know it. You feel it coming. The path forward feels forced and unsustainable.
Many years at the end of the Bengals’ Marvin Lewis era felt that way. Last year, with defensive coordinator Lou Anarumo (even if he ended up vindicated), felt stale. You could feel the need for a shakeup.
This doesn’t feel that way, largely because the unique nature of winning in this organization is different. Understanding why and how it is different saves time, money and potentially season-killing decisions in what should be a simple offseason.
Right now, the one advantage the Bengals possess more than anything else is that the offense is in a great place. Joe Burrow has weapons, a play caller he fully supports and developed years of comfort as he’s grown into one of the best quarterbacks on the planet. They built a system that, when Burrow, Tee Higgins and Ja’Marr Chase are healthy, performs as one of the best in the NFL. Outside of a free agent at right guard, all the starting pieces are back. They wake up tomorrow with a realistic shot to be the best offense in the NFL next season.
The staff, led by offensive coordinator Dan Pitcher, banked years of reps to consistently make smart, impactful tweaks. They built offenses that transformed as the years transpired to improve and take advantage of each year’s personnel.
For that, they have the hard part already done. They have an identity, confidence, proven structure and a comfortable franchise quarterback. The vast majority of the league would kill to start from that foundation.
Firing Taylor would mean blowing that up and ushering extreme, unforced uncertainty into the one thing the Bengals have going for them.
The last thing the Bengals need at this point is complexity. The last few years have been overflowing with it. Last year, it swallowed them whole. In free agency, with Trey Hendrickson, with executing extensions for Chase and Higgins before it impacted the offseason plan, with understanding the vision of new defensive coordinator Al Golden and with the chaotic stadium lease drama. With all of it.
Seemingly every year, the Bengals’ offseasons have been full of trade requests, hold-ins, hold-outs, high-profile rehabs and frustrated employees. There’s always plenty of time for those to emerge, but there’s a drastically different vibe to this year’s state of the Bengals.
Simplicity. This offseason feels pointed and direct, without distraction: Fix the defense.
“That’s the truth of it,” Taylor said. “There’s no real sugarcoating that. You got a bunch of guys coming back. It’s exciting because you can focus your energy.”
There’s power in that simplicity, specifically inside Paycor Stadium.
There were lessons learned during the defensive transition debacle of this past year, a disconnect between the staff and personnel department on what Golden needed and the front office’s ability to deliver it. Who holds the blame for those decisions and missed opportunities probably depends on who you talk to in the building. By all accounts, statistics and eye tests, the execution went haywire. The Bengals allowed more points than any season in franchise history and were the worst defense in the history of the NFL by DVOA through 11 weeks.
Fireable offenses everywhere, to be sure.
Also, there are now opportunities to learn what those miscommunications were. Everyone in personnel now clearly knows what Golden is looking for, how he wants to deploy those players and there’s a simple path (with plenty of cap space) to find players at every level of the defense to make an impact.
“It’s going to help we’ve had this whole staff here together going into our second year, on the defensive side of the ball,” Taylor said. “That helps every time we talk about personnel. That’s working with the scouts, working with Duke. Everyone has a better feel for each other.”
Learning from what went wrong this past year, rather than bringing in another set of problems caused by unknowns and change, would keep them from setting back any progress that was made.
It might not seem like there was much progress, but Golden was brought in for his history of developing players. In his first season, the players he was given did improve. There just weren’t nearly enough good ones.
They flipped from last in the NFL in points allowed per drive before the Week 10 bye to 11th after. DJ Turner turned into one of the best corners in the game. Defensive end Myles Murphy took a step the team has been desperate to witness. Even the maligned linebackers, Barrett Carter and Demetrius Knight Jr., came a long way despite the nearly unprecedented decision by Taylor to start the two rookies next to each other all season. No NFL team since the 2013 Atlanta Falcons had done so to that level.
They did face easier competition down the stretch. They still never made a stop to close out a game, most notably on the road against Buffalo Bills quarterback Josh Allen. They desperately need more star-level players who can make the play that can capture a win. There aren’t enough closers.
There’s a reason all eyes are on a free agency period Burrow referred to on Sunday as “paramount.” One successful offseason can be enough to take the lessons, momentum and continuity of these lost years and have them pay off on the other side.
Firing Tobin and/or Taylor on Monday would have made that process exponentially more difficult. A new general manager would want to blow this up and start over with their own. New lessons in how to accomplish things with this front office would start from scratch.
This is not a normal NFL franchise. Understanding how things operate, how to win around the restraints and the unique pitfalls are all part of success in the world of the Brown family ownership. This isn’t like how the rich, business moguls with multiple franchises operate. And no matter how much you yell for it, the family isn’t selling.
Tobin and this front office have whiffed in free agency in recent years after a two-year heater that helped build the championship roster in 2021 and 2022. The last two drafts are starting to come together, specifically the 2023 group, to form a foundation that can keep the need for relying on the unstable free-agent market to a slightly lower level.
This isn’t about the long term, though. Brown’s statement on Monday was mostly useless corporate-speak. Teams put them out every year and they don’t do much more than placate the fan base. That’s fine.
This one did mention Tobin, though, which is significant. The guy viewed as family in the building is now in the headline. Brown needed to throw his support behind him, whereas he’d never had his job status even talked about before. He’s in the same boat with Taylor and will be facing the media on Friday just as Taylor did on Monday.
That opens up the possibility they could both be sunk together if 2026 doesn’t go their way.
There’s a very realistic path to the Bengals being right back in the contender mix next season. The simplicity matters. The trends matter. The reps banked by young players matter. Starting over with a new coach or general manager right now takes contender off the table, and judging by the support thrown behind the head coach, would enrage Burrow in the process. It would also rely on the organization to get the next hire right.
The pressure applied on next season makes 365 days from today feel like a much different conversation about Taylor, Tobin, Burrow and everyone involved.
Taylor referenced the phrase on the wall inside Paycor Stadium on Monday: “Winning makes believers of us all,” a quote attributed to Paul Brown.
“That makes sense,” Taylor said.
Inevitably, the scoreboard next year will be the scoreboard on this decision, no matter how loud the criticism. The stadium will be loud again if they turn 6-11 into 11-6.
On paper and in Monday’s debrief meetings, it was clear this serves as a quintessential opportunity to prove that continuity can be an asset and counting on people you believe in to learn lessons from what went wrong can be a method of success.
The fireable offenses were noted. The dysfunction can’t be denied. Maybe any trust to pull off the simplest offseason task will prove misplaced again. The angry fan base, with three years of watching other franchise quarterbacks play in the postseason, has every right to demand change.
But for this organization and this group of players and this point in the timeline of the Taylor-Tobin-Burrow era, hitting the hard reset wasn’t the right choice.
The best chance for the Bengals to win in 2026 was to run it back, no matter how maddening that might be.
