With the Joe Burrow will-he-or-won’t-he story continuing, there have been plenty of chances for people to pile on the Bengals.
There will be more.
They earned them, by going 2-14 last year, and not winning a playoff game since 1991.
But Bengals coach Zac Taylor knows that until or unless they actually win some games (or spend some money), that being the easiest punch line in the NFL is something they’re stuck with.
“It’s become such a big deal the last few weeks you can’t avoid it,” Taylor said, via Paul Dehner of TheAthletic.com. “You got to win more football games to get people to shut up. Or whatever it is, have a higher respect, whatever you want to call it.
“It’s up to us to win more games and follow our plan, do it the right way, execute it. Build the team the right way, do it through free agency and the draft and keep building the culture we built upon and we will be in really good shape.”
Free agency is its own problem, because owner Mike Brown’s reputation as one of the cheapest in the sport is not accidental or unfair. His second-year head coach, however, thinks he has something he can sell to prospective players.
“I still feel like there’s a lot of great reasons to come here,” Taylor said. “We believe we are headed in the right direction. Our players believe it. Our coaches believe it. The more we get around players we are interested in, they are going to believe it as well. . . .
“What we can control is we have been here and the players have been around us. The coaches talk to other coaches around the league. I think people can have that perception that players hear that stuff, but they also talk to other players who have been in this building. We feel like we’ve had a great impact on those guys and they believe in what we are doing and guys would feel that.”
That might not matter as much if Burrow is able to leverage his way out of Cincinnati (if that’s something he’s interested in), or whether those hoped-for reinforcements in free agency never arrive.