CINCINNATI — Right before Ja’Marr Chase was handed a one-game suspension by the NFL for spitting at Steelers safety Jalen Ramsey, Zac Taylor made it clear that he is standing by his star receiver and offensive captain.
We won’t know what was said between the Bengals coach and Ja’Marr Chase, “I’ll just keep that to myself,” Taylor told me. “Again, people are allowed to make a mistake. I think the proof is in the pudding with how he has represented himself over and over and over.”
Privately, Taylor and the Bengals are upset that they have to deal with not only a team that has exited playoff conversation with still seven weeks left in the season but the image of one of their biggest stars disgracing the team with an unseemly spitting episode at an opponent.
Publicly, Taylor threw his support behind Chase on Monday and made it clear that he is family and will be forgiven for the transgression because the singular moment in the fourth quarter was so out of character.
“First of all I’ve always been impressed with how Ja’Marr’s handled himself, because he is in a lot of these situations where he’s got a target as a top player,” Taylor said. “He gets a lot of respect that way, so guys try to do a lot of things to get his attention, get him off his game. I’ve always thought it was unbelievable how he’s handled himself in high pressure, emotional decisions. Obviously what happened is crossing the line and we can’t have that. I know he’ll own up to that. Beyond that I’ve always sat up here and praised Ja’Marr, because he’s one of the best leaders we’ve got the way he goes about everything. He plays with a ton of emotion. He plays with a ton of leadership. Our guys respond to that and I’ve always appreciated how he’s handled himself.”
Taylor is spot on about all of that. After each heart-wrenching loss this season, Chase has been at his locker stall, answering questions with patient and sometimes abbreviated responses, playing the role of captain on the offense and trying to answer for why the team has underachieved. Every time, he has refused to throw the defense under the bus when in cases like the Jets and Bears games, he had every right to.
“I think Ja’Marr Chase will go down as one of my favorite all-time players and favorite all-time leaders and everything he is about,” Taylor continued. “It’s like we are trying to make something out of this situation. It’s the only thing that’s kind of upset me as I’m sitting in here. For a guy that has done everything we can to build our organization around he’s been awesome. Not perfect. I’m not perfect. Trust me, I made plenty of mistakes yesterday. People don’t see on camera. Unfortunately his was. He’s going to have to own up for that. That will be part of his journey. In some ways he’s a veteran. I think he’s going to play a long time. So when you look at the overall part of his career this will be the beginning of his career in a lot of ways. We are going to move past that and he is a guy we are going to continue to depend on. He’s a guy I will put at the forefront of any leadership group I ever have for the rest of my life. When I retire I will bring Ja’Marr Chase in as a board member of whatever leadership board I create to talk to people I want him to talk to. I hope you understand my position on this because he is a guy who has done everything he possibly could to help us win and do things the right way.”
Taylor knows the kind of leader Chase is, and why he was elected captain.
“I think everyone has to do it in their own way,” Taylor continued. “The biggest mistake you can make is asking too much of somebody when that is just not in their DNA. That’s not how they operate. That’s not how they lead. Plenty of great leadership is just guys leading by example and doing it the right way. Guys feed off that. They know that when they do finally speak, the once a year they speak it’s a guy they have a lot of respect for. We have a lot of guys in the locker room like that. Guys I would never put in a position to stand in front of the team and given a speech on Saturday night. That is not putting them in the right position. You can lead a lot of different ways. You can lead by encouraging another guy at your position that is maybe going through some struggles. You can lead by just practicing hard and letting other guys see you are doing it that way. There’s a lot of different forms of leadership.”
How does the front office feel? We have no idea because Taylor is the only team official that speaks to anything that happens on the field.
“Ja’Marr’s one of my favorite players. I love how this guy handles everything that he’s been a part of, so making one mistake doesn’t disregard everything this guy’s done that’s been positive for us. I can’t say enough positive things about Ja’Marr and think about the amount of situations people have tried to put him in and the way that he’s always responded. We’re not all perfect. We’re going to make a mistake here and there, but I stand by Ja’Marr. I know it’s an emotional situation. I know there’s a lot of things going on there that lead to things like that. We’ll just continue to move forward.”
With that, the Bengals indeed have to move forward with the rest of the schedule, which includes four games against the Patriots, Ravens, Bills and Ravens again. The Bengals finish with a road game at Miami and home games against Arizona and Cleveland. The Bengals knew their season would be defined by nine games, four games at the start against Minnesota, Denver, Detroit and Green Bay. And then the five-game stretch against the Steelers, Patriots, Ravens, Bills and Ravens. They are 0-5 so far in those litmus test games.
“I hate the record we have,” Taylor said. “I hate the position we are in. The silver lining is you learn so much about people right now that when we are going to be back up here you found out a lot about who handles adversity and who can be in the thick of this. Because we are in the NFL. There are a lot of those moments. I have been in a lot of them. I know what can be on the other side and I know how to get there. And I know that we are going to get there. The only silver lining to losing is I get to know who gets to be a part of the journey going forward and I see a lot of guys in the locker room, I see a lot of guys I depend on and I know I can depend on and they’ll have my back and I’ll have theirs.
“It’s got to hurt you. It has to hurt you. You can’t get to that point where you’re numb to losing. That’s a bad place to be. And unfortunately we’ve done a lot of (losing). But we can’t numb ourselves to that. You still have to feel the pain when you walk off the field from the mistakes that you made and the opportunities that you missed. It’s still got to feed you moving forward. But we also can’t forget what winning does for us. Just one win can change the whole trajectory of our season. And why not this week? We’re gonna put everything we’ve got into it. I believe in everybody we’ve got, and we’re gonna fight to find this win this week.”
That’s the next big question to be answered. Burrow is coming off surgery on his left big toe that involved a grade 3 sprain and tear of the ligaments beneath the toe suffered on Sept. 14 against Jacksonville.
“The starting point is, he did 7-on-7 last week, came out of the week feeling good, and so then this week, the plan will be, let’s get to Wednesday and see if we can work in some 11-on-11 and go from there,” Taylor said. “So, I think before we ever do that, there’s no reason to have a discussion on what the timeline is beyond that, because there’s just steps we’ve got to follow. Seven-on-7, great, did individual, and now we continue with the rehab phase next week, and that’s 11-on-11, that’s getting bodies around him, seeing how he feels, seeing how he moves. And so until we’ve done any of that, there’s no reason for me to speculate on where it’s going to be.”
If Burrow feels strong enough, look for him to play Thursday night Nov. 27, regardless of the outcome of this Sunday against New England.
“I think right now, he’s of the mindset that he wants to play football for us,” Taylor said. “We’ll just continue to get through his rehab progression and see where that ends up before we make any decision on how we want to proceed.”
When you’re dead last in the NFL in team defense, you’re looking for a glimmer of hope, a spec of a light beam of hope in a lost season. That’s where defensive coordinator Al Golden is with his defense right now. There were some significant signs of life Sunday, namely in the first half. After allowing the Steelers to march down the field for 78 yards in eight plays for a touchdown, they forced three punts and held the Steelers to seven points before the disastrous final drive before half.
“I thought we played with energy,” Golden said. “The guys were confident in what we were doing. Our mental errors were way down. The complexity of what they do in the run game creates a lot of those. We played fast. We fit really well. Even the one that got out early, I knew the guys when they came over they had confidence in what we were doing. That didn’t steal their confidence on the 35 yarder. Other than that, you’re talking 27 carries for the remaining 70 yards. The guys fought hard. They did play with energy. The one thing that would help that is get a turnover, interception or sack fumble. Those plays breed energy. We’ve been devoid of that recently. For me, battle represents that, Turner represents that, Knight represents that. Barrett represents that. Jenkins. Ossai. A bunch of guys play with energy. I saw Myles yesterday get excited. We just need to make one or two, create two turnovers. We’ve got to get back to work on that.”
The Bengals still allowed 7-of-13 conversions by the Steelers on third down and 343 total yards of offense. The signature play of the game was ugly for the Bengals defense as Darnell Washington, a 6-7, 270-pound tight end caught a shallow crosser and proceeded to stiff arm Barrett Carter to the ground, elude a weak effort from Geno Stone on the sideline and steamroll DJ Turner en route to a 31-yard gain down to the Bengals 31.
“I think there was a lot of individual improvement,” Golden added. “Structurally, I thought we improved versus the run game. A lot of that is a tribute the individual improvement, right? Barrett had really good command of the line of scrimmage. Got us in the right fronts and checks and slid the front when he needed to. I thought everybody saw the run game really well. Myles Murphy set really good edges for us and had positive footwork all day. There’s guys I’m leaving out. But all of those were positives. And then we just gotta finish. We have to finish. When we do work as hard as we did to get them into third and longer, we gotta be able to finish in those situations. Because we really did. We worked hard. A lot of guys we were counting on in the run game came through for us — linebackers, safeties, corners, tackling on the edge. All those things. And we got them into the downs that we have to execute better.”
The Bengals will see a lot of Marco Wilson and Josh Newton in the final seven games, as the two battle for the corner spot opposite DJ Turner in the wake of the news that Cam Taylor-Britt will be out with Lisfranc surgery on his left foot.
“The last three weeks, I’ve been so excited to work with Cam,” Golden said. “The positive trend that he was on, even in the game the other day and tackling coming out in our sideline on the first play of the two minute drive. Another red zone stop fitting off Cam Sample on the red zone toss. Showing up and being physical. He was getting better in coverage. I loved the trend that he was on. Quite frankly, I’m sad that we don’t have a chance to continue to develop him.”
