Brown’s announcement came shortly after another Ohio team, the Cleveland Browns, fired coach Kevin Stefanski, which happened less than a day after Stefanski’s team beat Taylor’s team in the season finale in Cincinnati. While the competition was exciting, Sunday’s clash at state marked disappointing campaigns for both clubs, yet they are taking different approaches to how they move forward into 2026.
Taylor’s biggest accomplishment as Bengals coach remains the 2021 season, the year Taylor led the Bengals to their first Super Bowl appearance since the 1988 season and nearly took home the Lombardi Trophy before falling to the Los Angeles Rams in heartbreaking fashion. Since then, the Bengals have lived up to expectations, losing in similarly painful fashion in the AFC Championship Game to end the 2022 season before beginning a three-year run in which they have flirted with a postseason berth, but repeatedly failed to return to the playoffs.
Much of that season has been defined by injuries to their manager, Joe Burrow. 2020 no. The No. 1 overall pick ran into more health-related challenges in 2025, suffering a week 2 turf toe injury that kept him out until Thanksgiving. In Burrow’s absence, Cincinnati won just one game trying to keep the ship afloat with 40-year-old signal-caller Joe Flacco, whom the Bengals acquired in a trade with the Browns after Jake Browning proved unsuccessful in Burrow’s replacement.
Taylor’s defenders can pin Cincinnati’s struggles in 2025 on Burrow’s absence, but the club’s ineptitude has extended beyond quarterback. Despite boasting an explosive offense, the Bengals lost four games in which they scored 30-plus points in 2024. Taylor attempted to remedy the situation by firing defensive coordinator Lou Anarumo and replacing him with former Notre Dame DC Al Golden, a move that did not produce tangible results until later in the 2025 season.
Burrow’s return — which came ahead of schedule — represented the Bengals’ last lingering hope in 2025, but losses to Buffalo and Baltimore in December ended their chances of completing an unlikely run to the postseason and raised Taylor’s temperature as his quarterback spent the remaining weeks talking openly about his motivation to stay in the NFL. Burrow finished 2025 strong and seemed to calm fears of an uncertain future by leading an offensive attack that scored 45 points against Miami and 37 against Arizona in Weeks 16 and 17 before falling to Cleveland on Sunday.
Cincinnati won’t have to spend the next few weeks searching for a coach, but the Bengals have plenty of questions to answer and issues to deal with, including how they’ll improve their defense when a significant portion of their salary cap space is dedicated to Burrow and his top two receivers: Ja’Marr Chase and Tee Higgins. They will do it with the same control that brought them to this point.