Zac Taylor At League Meetings, Meets With National Media

PALM BEACH, Fla. _ Bengals head coach Zac Taylor, his backup wristwatch stuck on 10 o’clock, showed up for the crack-of-dawn AFC coaches media breakfast Monday 10 minutes early with a sped-up plan for the offseason.

During the first full day of the NFL’s annual meetings, Taylor revealed tweaks designed to get the Bengals out of the gate faster this September.

He said he plans to play more of his regulars in the preseason games, as well as ramp up the spring with more team bonding and playbook work.

Taylor addressed the expanded preseason play time when he spoke of his belief in new defensive coordinator Al Golden and his units’ ability to ball hawk at Notre Dame the past three seasons and while he was the Bengals linebackers coach from 2020-21.

“I know Al Golden has a tremendous plan having been with us, having been to college, Notre Dame was an outstanding tackling team,” Taylor said. “There’s a lot of things that I’m excited to watch and I’ll do to make sure that we can continue to enhance that with our guys. We don’t do a lot of (tackling) to the ground in training camp. That’s what the preseason games are for. I see our guys playing more in the preseason this year than we have in the past.”

That also means the offense, where the starters played only the preseason opener and quarterback Joe Burrow took 13 snaps. Taylor says he’s hoping the added time translates to the opening weeks of the season, where they haven’t won in the first two games since 2021.

He’s also looking to implement a training camp intensity to the Xs and Os of the spring.

“It’s more football. It’s the playbook and the football IQ and the situational stuff,” Taylor said. “Letting guys be involved in that and as coaches we’re going to do that all season. We’re going to get up in front of the room and explain it and there’ll be sometimes maybe the players can get up there and join in the fun and explain it a little bit … It’ll build the football IQ and the situational awareness and also get to know your teammates a little bit better. “

Taylor underscored the chemistry after last spring’s locker room re-modeling put the players in different spaces instead of one big area.

“I’m excited to have everybody in the same locker room, everyone gets a chance to really know these free agents and rookies and build that bond,” Taylor said. “I don’t think we’ve had bad team cohesiveness, but I just want more of it.

“So that when we come out of the offseason program, Joe Burrow can tell you about the new rookies such and such. The rookie can tell you a lot about Orlando Brown and the journey he’s been on. I think I want to go into training camp where these guys really know and understand.”

But Taylor remains adamant he’s not going to beat up his guys up in the spring with excessive ones vs. ones team drills.

“We do the walkthroughs good on good, but the full speed, it’s just so limited to what you can do,” Taylor said. “What I found is our guys come out of it feeling beat up when … you’ve got no protection on your shoulders and so now you’re trying to get your body back for the month of July to get ready for training camp when you spent the whole offseason getting yourself in the best shape of your life and then you’re kind of hitting the reset button a little bit in year one and year two the way we did it.

“I really felt great about how we’ve come out of the offseason in terms of the preparation. We’ve just got to do a great job in training camp, getting ourselves ready for the first game of season.”