Bengals have nowhere else to look but directly at Zac Taylor after the worst loss of his career

There's a simple line of logic the Cincinnati Bengals need to follow after their 38-39 loss to the New York Jets.

Last season was beyond frustrating. The offense featured career-years for Joe Burrow and Ja'Marr Chase. Trey Hendrickson was putting up sacks left and right as well, but the defense was Cincinnati's undoing and ultimately tanked the team's chances of returning to the playoffs.

For 2025, head coach Zac Taylor was given another shot and got to reconstruct the defensive coaching staff instead of a complete reset. He hired his actual next-door neighbor Al Golden to replace Lou Anarumo as defensive coordinator and fix everything wrong with the unit.

What has become clear after eight weeks is simple. The Bengals' defense is still awful, the team as a whole isn't built to play in the playoffs again, and those who were spared last year now have nowhere to hide.

Starting with the head coach.

Bengals' epic failure against Jets says it all for Zac Taylor

Is there anywhere left to go from here? Honestly asking.

Cincinnati drops to 3-5 on the season after blowing a multi-touchdown lead to New York. The Jets, of course, entered this game winless. They did not announce their starting quarterback until Saturday when Tyrod Taylor was declared out due to injury. They were without two of their best players in wide receiver Garrett Wilson and cornerback Sauce Gardner.

They were down the entire game, including a 14-point deficit with 10:21 remaining in the fourth quarter. And they won.

Or maybe the Bengals just lost. It certainly feels that way when looking at things from Taylor's perspective.

Cincinnati suffocated New York's offense in the first quarter to then allow 39 points in the ensuing 45 minutes. The Jets amassed 502 total yards including 254 on the ground. They needed 23 points in the fourth quarter just to win by one point, and they got all 23 on three drives and 20 total plays.

Collapse doesn’t even feel like the right word. Nuclear meltdowns have looked prettier than this.

But this is where the next step is important. Golden's defense was the reason why this game went down the way it did. Poor tackling has plagued his unit for eight weeks running, and without Trey Hendrickson for a good portion of the game, the pass rush was non-existent. Hendrickson could hardly help even when he was fighting through his hip injury.

Taylor was already allowed to blame Golden's predecessor for blowing games. He can't anymore after the front office allowed him to start anew on that side of the ball.

This loss goes so far beyond Golden and the defense. This falls on Taylor, and everyone involved in the direction this team took over the last 10 months. That includes director of player personnel (and de facto general manager) Duke Tobin, but Tobin has been in the building long before Taylor and doesn't deal with the same pressure to succeed as Taylor does.

A total cleaning of the house could've happened. Taylor exited his sixth season as Cincy's head coach with a record of 46-52-1. Two years had passed since his last trip to the postseason. Plenty franchises wouldn't (and havent) keep around a sub-.500 coach for that long, especially with an elite quarterback in Joe Burrow working through his golden years. The Bengals opted for patience, and therefore, metric tons of pressure were placed on Taylor's shoulders for running back a similar roster with different voices coaching one side of the ball.

That pressure finally showed its weight as Cincinnati falls to 3-5 with a loss to the worst team in the NFL. It all falls on Taylor, as that's the deal the head coach under Tobin, Mike Brown, and the Blackburn family has to make to lead this team.

It's not fair. Of course it's not. Taylor had to adjust to his third starting QB in less than two months. He has to deal with finding roles for defensive draft picks that show very little signs of promise, and a free-agency process that is second-rate compared to other organizations.

Despite all of that, what happened Sunday cannot be excused. The very thing he attempted to fix has cost him again, only this time, it led to the worst loss on his resume.

And nothing can be said to justify it.