As in that iconic Hertz commercial, when it comes to deciding who the NFL's Coach of the Year should be in 2021, there is Zac Taylor, and there's "not exactly."
When Taylor was hired to replace the fired Marvin Lewis — who was one-and-done in the playoffs all seven times that his teams made it, including five times in a row (2011 through 2015) — on February 4, 2019, the hiring was greeted with derision essentially everywhere, as Taylor's previous job was as quarterback coach of the Rams, after having been promoted from assistant wide receivers coach (what does an assistant wide receivers coach even do, anyway?), in which capacity he had served the club in 2017.
But just like his namesake, who was first the conquering hero of the Mexican War, and then the 12th President of the United States, Taylor was destined for bigger, and better, things, even if his journey vindicated Steve Miller's lyric (from his 1977 hit Jet Airliner) that you got to go through hell before you get to heaven — as in a 2-14 finish in 2019, including an 0-11 start, the worst such start in franchise history.
Yet that hellish season held the key to the team's heavenly rise, since it enabled the Bengals to draft Ohio State-turned LSU quarterback Joe Burrow, whose selection as the first player taken in the 2020 draft gave him the third and final jewel in college football's "Triple Crown," Burrow already having won both the Heisman Trophy (by the widest margin in the award's 87-year history) and the no-longer-mythical national championship.
However, more adversity lay ahead — both for the Bengals in general, and for Burrow in particular, in Burrow's NFL rookie season of 2020: In a Week 11 game against the future Washington Admirals — or Washington Commanders, depending on which rumor one chooses to believe — Burrow hit the "superfecta" — torn ACL, MCL, PCL and meniscus in his left knee — obviously ending his 2020 season and raising grave doubts as to whether he would answer the bell for the 2021 season — or for that matter, any future season.
(The Bengals finished the 2020 season with a record of 4-11-1 — same as the Eagles, with whom they played to a 23-23 tie in Week 3.)
But when the bell rang at the start of the 2021 season, Burrow, in nothing short of a miracle, was under center — and, among other things, he led the entire NFL in completion percentage, at 70.4%, in yards per attempt with 8.9, and was second in yards per completion with 12.6 — and in a Week 16 game against the AFC North rival Baltimore Ravens, Burrow threw for 525 yards, missing Norm Van Brocklin's single-season passing-yards record by just 29 yards. The 41-21 win gave the Bengals their first winning season since 2015; and the following week, Burrow completed 30-of-39 for 446 yards, 4 touchdowns and no interceptions in a 34-31 upset of the Kansas City Chiefs, clinching Cincinnati's first AFC North title, also since 2015.
After losing a Week 18 "Siesta Bowl" in Cleveland, it was on to the wild card round of the playoffs, with the Bengals getting to play at home as division champions. Aided in no small measure by getting to face a domed-stadium team in a game that had a kickoff-time temperature of 31 degrees with a wind chill of 22, the Bengals eked out a 26-19 win over the Raiders in the favorable (for them) conditions, whose outcome was sealed only when Bengals linebacker Germaine Pratt picked off an errant Derek Carr pass in the end zone with 12 seconds left in the game.
Then came a much bigger challenge — on Saturday night at Tennessee: the Bengals had never — repeat, never — won a playoff game on the road in franchise history (0-7) — but emerged with a 19-16 victory when, in a redux of their win over Las Vegas the Saturday before, Ryan Tannehill — a game manager if ever there was one — was intercepted by Logan Wilson, also a linebacker (sometimes you just can't make this stuff up!) with 20 seconds remaining and the score tied at 16. One 19-yard completion to Ja'Marr Chase was all it took for Evan McPherson to win it with a 52-yard field goal as time expired.
The Cincinnati win left the Houston Texans as the only NFL team never to have won a playoff game on the road (0-4) and sent the Bengals to the "final four" — remember that the spelling two Fs in capital letters is a registered trademark of the NCAA! — for the first time since 1988, when they went one step further by reaching Super Bowl XXIII, where they lost to the 49ers (they had also lost to San Francisco in Super Bowl XVI).
One final point clinches Coach of the Year honors for Taylor: The Bengals were 150-1 to win the Super Bowl — which they are of course still alive to do — tied with the Jets for the third longest price in the league just before the regular season started. Only the Lions, at 250-1, and the Texans, at 300-1, went off at higher prices.
Big balloons, as the late Harvey Pack liked to say?
Exactly.
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