Cincinnati Bengals head coach Zac Taylor is in a tough spot. For all the years he's covered the offense when Joe Burrow went down, the win-loss buck stops with him. Untimely special teams miscues and defensive issues aside, Taylor is the fall guy in Cincy.
Because who else is it gonna be? Burrow? Come on. Duke Tobin, who's held his post since 1999? These are rhetorical questions.
What isn't a rhetorical question, even after Taylor led the Bengals to a 31-24 Week 5 win in Miami: Is his job safe, even though he has an additional full season left on his contract?
Zac Taylor Hot Seat Meter after Week 5: A STEADY SIZZLE FROM FLORIDA HEAT — 5/10
Just a half-point up from where I had Zac Taylor's hot seat last week on a scale of 1-10, with 10 being, well, a seating arrangement engulfed in flames. Not with Zac sitting on it of course. He'd already be fired in that instance.
A convincing victory to springboard into the bye would've done Taylor a lot of favors. Instead, the Dolphins kept hanging around despite Malik Willis' horrendous play as Burrow's counterpart.
Don't harm the messenger. this is sort of the consensus on Taylor from what I've seen around Who Dey Nation:
This team is not good
— Bengals Graphics (@bengalsgraphic5) October 11, 2026
You fire Zac Taylor after this game
Taylor did get some semblance of a ground game going (finally) by giving Samaje Perine more carries than Chase Brown. To me, Taylor's hot seat meter should go up a half-point by Week if Perine hasn't, in fact, replaced Brown as the starting running back.
The 50/50 nature of how hot Taylor's seat is reflects the message of urgency he and Burrow have driven into the ground around the building. If whatever Taylor is buying isn't really selling, don't the Bengals owe it to themselves and Burrow to do their due diligence and find a new leader for the locker room?
When you're admitting in postgame press conferences that your team lacks discipline, even though it reflects poorly on you, you might be on the hot seat, ya know? Taylor did that on Sunday:
"There’s a lot of frustrating things on our end. We had two personal fouls, we fumbled twice in the red zone, we caught a kick off on the 4-yard line, we had a penalty on a field goal. [...] So plenty, plenty to clean up.
Another way to think about it: Would Taylor flourish as a head coach elsewhere? Maybe in the right situation. Would Burrow and the Bengals benefit from an upgrade? Absolutely.
It's not like Taylor has some reputation as a phenomenal offensive mind. Nor does he have a personality that really jumps out at you. Just look at this data set that I cited somewhere else before:
Called Run Rate
— Ben Fennell (@BenFennell_NFL) October 5, 2026
🔸31. CIN 31.3%
Run Action Rate (Run + Play Action)
🔸32. CIN 43.4%
Motion at Snap %
🔸32. CIN 25.1%
...you better have an f'n assassin and magician at QB AND nearly every OL spot to survive this way, IMO.
I do dig some of Taylor's even-keeled demeanor, and again, the ability to keep the Bengals relevant with Jake Browning and Joe Flacco in 2023 and 2025 respectively is nothing short of an excellent job.
On top of all this, how patient will 91-year-old Bengals owner Mike Brown be if Taylor's team still looks as sloppy as they did in Week 5? Not very. Then again, if we're all being honest here, he waited until this offseason to sign off on truly going all-in for a Super Bowl.
The good news for Taylor? If he goes into Baltimore and beats down the Ravens like the Bengals did this past Thanksgiving, he could drop his hot seat meter by, like, a full 1.5 points. That's how much a dub against the 4-1 AFC North leaders would mean. And it's so doable if Taylor can rally his troops to stop beating themselves with dumb penalties and blown fundamentals so often.
Add us as a preferred source on Google