One doesn’t have to look far this offseason to see Cincinnati Bengals head coach Zac Taylor popping up on hot seat lists.
The Bengals head coach survived another offseason despite well-publicized struggles for a few reasons. Chief among those, though, was the front office suddenly modernizing at the same time it decided to go all in, to the point of trading away a top-10 draft pick.
Those are the highlight items that explain why Taylor remains a top hot-seat name in the minds of onlookers such as Bleacher Report’s Brent Sobleski.
“Bengals owner Mike Brown tends to be tight with his purse strings and previously showed he's willing to let a coach's contract play out completely before making a final decision, as he did with Taylor's predecessor, Marvin
Lewis,” Sobleski wrote. “Though another failed attempt to make the postseason should test Brown's patience.”
Taylor apparently had something of a secret contract extension that wasn't revealed until last December that will keep him in town through 2027.
That is, unless things really go badly again.
With a rebuilt defense, healthy Joe Burrow and a massive stamp of approval from the front office (don’t forget the rest of the AFC North started over with new head coaches), these factors explain both why Taylor is still in town and why he’d be under a unique kind of pressure if there isn’t playoff success.
This article originally appeared on Bengals Wire: Bengals' Zac Taylor gets another hot-seat warning
