Zac Taylor is holding the Cincinnati Bengals back

There’s no question that the Cincinnati Bengals have surprised people this year. They’re 3-2 with losses coming to the Bears and Packers and the wins coming against the Vikings, Steelers, and Jaguars.

The Bengals could easily be 5-0 right now (and could also easily be 0-5 as well) and while they’ve shown some tremendous fight in them this year, one thing stands out in all of their games no matter what the outcome is — Zac Taylor is holding this team back from being a legitimate contender.

It says something when even at 3-1, fans were still campaigning for Taylor to be let go. He’s made some really bone-headed decisions this season and that continued in Week 5 and ultimately led to why this team couldn’t get what would have been a crucial win over one of the NFC’s best teams.

A big example from the loss to Green Bay is when it was 3rd and 5 late in the game and rather than letting Joe Burrow drop back to pass, Taylor opted for a handoff to Samaje Perine. The Bengals didn’t convert and Evan McPherson trotted out to attempt a 57-yard field goal, which he promptly missed.

Speaking of field goals, Taylor passed on letting McPherson attempt two field goals during the game and punted instead. Going for it or kicking the field goals would have been better options there but Taylor “played it safe” by kicking the ball back to Aaron Rodgers’ explosive offense.

Zac Taylor continues to hurt the Cincinnati Bengals during games.

The most frustrating part about all of this is that Taylor gave a pretty lame excuse as to why he took the ball out of Burrow’s hands on that play.

"At the end particularly, when it’s a game-winning field goal, that’s the difference. Had it been in the normal part of the game, we’d be more aggressive because we want to go score the touchdown. We just felt Evan was going to give us an opportunity to win, so let’s put him in a good position to do it. It just didn’t go our way today."

It’s interesting that he felt comfortable letting McPherson attempt the field goal there but not earlier in the game when the one in question was a much longer attempt than the other two. It’s also annoying because Burrow is the franchise quarterback for a reason and he showed what he can do with the game on the line in the win over Jacksonville. Let him throw the ball!

Things could be much worse for the Bengals this year and no one is upset about a 3-2 start. With some of the tougher games approaching on the schedule, however, Taylor needs to start making better decisions because these decisions could end up costing him his job.