CINCINNATI — As Zac Taylor made his way through the locker room after a 19-17 win Saturday night over the Steelers that wound up only extending the inevitable, the Bengals head coach shared bro hugs with his two star receivers and his franchise quarterback.
As it turned out, the embraces with Ja’Marr Chase, Tee Higgins and Joe Burrow would be final postgame moment the Bengals head coach and his three offensive star players would share this season.
Denver’s 38-0 demolition of the resting Kansas City Chiefs, who looked like a team that wanted no part of Joe Burrow in the playoffs, made that much certain.
The Bengals rallied from 4-8 with a five-game winning streak, second only to the 10-gamer in 2022 in the Taylor era that began in 2019. The Bengals had their best players bring their best over the final five weeks. The Bengals stayed together and didn’t throw in the towel in any way shape or form, most notably in the closing two minutes in Pittsburgh Saturday night. The Bengals leadership stepped up and it was apparent there was still enough voices in the room to lead.
Aside from the Jermaine Burton off-the-field situation, there was no back-biting. There were no moments of going back-and-forth between locker stalls in the final two months with he said-he said drama. The Bengals maintained they are a together bunch. The last five weeks at least demonstrated that.
“I mean, it’s hard, and you’ve got to trust the locker room that they’re handling everybody the right way,” Taylor told me. “I know it because I see it in the meetings and I see it in practice. There was never a sense of doubt in my mind of how this team would respond at any moment in the season, whatever our record was. 4-8 is the run that stands out the most. But I didn’t sit in my office worried at night how is this team going to respond.
“I knew how they’d respond because I’d seen it, and we all saw the results that had happened during the season. We all knew that it’s kind of one of those years where some of those games didn’t go our way, and those are things we certainly can control. But I can’t state enough of how proud I am of everybody that’s involved in this Bengals organization and the way that they’ve stuck together, and we finished with a five in
a row.”
Taylor has always relied on the culture he’s created inside the building. But culture can take you only so far. And as this season proved, your three most productive players can only do so much. Joe Burrow led the league in passing yards and TDs and is in the short-list MVP conversation with Lamar Jackson and Josh Allen. Ja’Marr Chase finished the season with a rare “Triple Crown” in receiving and Trey Hendrickson led the league in sacks.
But the pieces on defense and special teams were not good enough for three months and in the end that cost the Bengals a playoff berth. The front office needs to rebound from last offseason when they failed in free agency to make an impact in the first two days, salvaging Day 3 with safety Geno Stone and bringing back Vonn Bell.
The Bengals didn’t make the playoffs as a 9-8 team because they weren’t good enough. As the close losses and the inexcusable losses mounted, they were going to have to depend on help from other teams.
The Chiefs get a first-round date with Josh Allen and the Buffalo Bills. Would Joe Burrow scare the Bills more than rookie Bo Nix? Probably. But that point is moot because the Bengals:
The Bengals would win their final five games but it wasn’t enough because the Bengals weren’t good enough in too many key moments in the first 12 weeks.
“Anytime you don’t make the playoffs, it’s a failure,” Burrow said. “That’s what you’re aiming for every year. That’s why you work so hard is to be at your best in the end. These last five weeks we have been. We just weren’t able to find an extra win there early in the season that would put us in a better spot.”
That’s the lesson of the 2024 Bengals. They were incapable of finishing too many games and they continued their abysmal trend of slow starts. They are now 1-11 in the season’s first two games under Taylor.
The Bengals have to figure that out on the field. Off the field, ownership and the personnel department has to find a way to re-sign Ja’Marr Chase, make a competitive offer to Tee Higgins – who Joe Burrow wants back badly – decide whether to extend Hendrickson, decide what to do with Joseph Ossai, add 2-3 edge rushers, add 2-3 defensive tackles and add depth on the interior offensive line.
What will become of coaches such as defensive coordinator Lou Anarumo, defensive line coach Marion Hobby and offensive line coach Frank Pollack? Decisions have to be made almost immediately as Zac Taylor begins to plot a course for 2025 and lay groundwork so this doesn’t happen again. Hendrickson gave credit after the game to Anarumo for the defensive turnaround in the last five weeks. “Those things are out of my control but I love him,” Hendrickson said. “He’s a great man, a great leader.”
This is the most critical offseason of the Joe Burrow era – and it’s not close.
Still, there’s a lot of positives to take from a fourth straight winning season, starting with the fact that the Bengals didn’t mail it in at 4-8.
“It says a lot. We work really hard on that,” Taylor said. “We focus on bringing the right guys that when the times are the toughest they’re going to respond the right way. That’s coaches, that’s players. That’s all we saw from this team when it got really tough. So I’m really proud of how this team has stuck together, how everyone has given their best, and we were able to win five in a row, and we’ll see what happens.”
Trey Hendrickson had 3.5 sacks in the season finale and finished 17.5, becoming the first Bengal to ever lead the NFL in sacks since the stat became an official stat in 1982. (Coy Bacon led the NFL and the Bengals with 22 in 1976).
“You (can) put him up there with all of the best pass rushers,” Taylor said. “He’s going to run away as the sack leader tomorrow when the games are over with 17.5. He’s just done it every single year since he’s been here. All he does is produce, and I’ve said this many times I’m not shocked by this. He’s gonna be in there the day the season ends working out in the weight room and being ready for the next year. That’s what he does, so he put himself in a position to where he can show up like he did today. Not surprised the slightest by it, really proud of Trey, the work he puts in practice, every single day, its for moments like these.”
The Bengals head into this offseason feeling like they’re the best team not in the playoffs. They are certainly playing better than the likes of the Steelers, Texans and Broncos. They took Baltimore, the Chargers and Kansas City to the wire before losing.
But that kind of consolation is for organizations that haven’t won a Super Bowl yet. For that to change, the results for the team have to start in September. The front office needs to start today.