Athletic Piece on Zac Taylor

[Jmble]

I know I haven't been around much lately, but B1 reminded me that he counted on me sharing the good stuff from the Athletic and I thought this was worthy of sharing. I have to admit that I still have been in the position of thinking that the Bengals made it to the Super Bowl in spite of Zach rather than because of him, but honestly after all of this, my opinion of him has really changed. I still wish he would consider passing on the play calling at times, but I couldn't be happier to have him as our coach. I think we are seeing the leadership that these players see from him every day even if this is in the most extreme situation.

CINCINNATI — Zac Taylor knew the moment no more football would be played Monday night.

For all the emotion, emergency action plans, discrepancies over warming up and mortified reactions from players inside Paycor Stadium in the surreal aftermath of Damar Hamlin falling to the turf, one moment churned gut feeling into obvious decision.

“When I got over there, the first thing (Bills coach Sean McDermott) said was, ‘I need to be at the hospital for Damar, and I shouldn’t be coaching this game,'” Taylor said. “So that, to me, provides all the clarity.”

From that point forward, the game was over. That was all Taylor needed to hear. The most anticipated regular season game in recent Bengals history and the game of the season in the NFL needed to end. That reality would be harsh and consequential, but, for Taylor, the only one.

That’s why when the ambulance with Hamlin inside left the field and the teams were faced with the unfathomable question of what to do next, Taylor wanted to walk across the field to McDermott directly. To talk to the man. Connect with the person in that moment for one of the hardest conversations imaginable.

He went over there not to spout his opinion. Rather to listen and connect.

“Unprecedented is the word that gets thrown out a lot about this situation because that’s what it is,” said Taylor, who admitted he didn’t directly know McDermott before this, but always had respect for him as a coach. “But in that moment, he really showed who he was and that all his focus was just on Damar and being there for him, being there for his family at the hospital.”

Much has been made of a potential initial move to warm up for five minutes, but all that mattered was when Taylor and McDermott took the lead, the right decisions ended up being made.

“I was proud in that moment to be playing for a guy like Zac,” Joe Burrow said.

Empathy, compassion and relationships trumped football, seedings and ratings. In an NFL forever defined by “move the drill” and “do your job,” Taylor did his part to ensure people come first.

In many ways, in one of the brightest, most unfathomable spotlights the league has ever seen, Taylor had his shining moment of leadership.

“It’s unfortunate to some degree that everybody gets to see who and what Zac is all about in such a terrible situation,” offensive coordinator Brian Callahan said. “He was able to handle such a difficult situation and there’s a lot of light shed on what type of person he is. To see how and what he has done to navigate this situation is exactly what I would have expected from him. Because that’s what I see every day.”

The entire NFL saw it. Titans head coach Mike Vrabel opened his press conference praising the leadership of Taylor and McDermott. Rams head coach Sean McVay expressed so much respect for navigating a situation “without a manual.” Damar Hamlin’s family made sure to mention Taylor by name in their first statement about his condition. Taylor’s name was trending for days, inundated by praise for his reaction and offering thanks for his compassion.

Green Bay quarterback Aaron Rodgers drove home his lasting impression while on “The Pat McAfee Show.”

“One person who deserves a lot of credit in this situation is coach Taylor,” Rodgers said. “I saw him walk across the field. The empathy that I saw in his face and the way he handled that thing. Coach McDermott, this is your guy and he’s going through it. And it wasn’t even a question. No, we are not going to play this game. What are you talking about?”

Knowing the game should end after hearing those words from McDermott didn’t seem like an act of heroism for the 39-year-old Bengals head coach. He called it a “no-brainer.”

In conjunction with McDermott, this amounted to an extension of philosophy. In moments of true crisis, the core of who you are as a leader, coach and man is exposed.

Taylor played to his strengths: listen, empathize, connect and adapt.

“We get to see that Zac often,” said Doug Rosfeld, who worked with Taylor at the University of Cincinnati and was among Taylor’s first hires as director of coaching operations with the Bengals. “We see a Zac that listens intently, analyzes situations, speaks precisely and clearly. For me, it wasn’t like seeing, ‘Oh, he changed into his Superman costume.’ It was seeing the person that I trusted my family with to come work for. It’s a person I’ve known for years, that guy who has been consistent when our record was up, our record was down, times were good, times were bad. That’s Zac.”

And that’s why Bengals players have spent the last two years swearing by this culture, which permeates from coaches to captains to players to staff, as the root of the franchise’s renaissance. When the question was asked countless times to the Bengals in February how they managed to go from 6-25-1 over his first two seasons to a Super Bowl berth, this openness to listen and adapt constantly landed in the replies.

“I feel like coach Taylor has had the experience of being under the old way, the new way, you know there is always different types of philosophies coaches bring,” Jessie Bates said prior to Super Bowl 56. “That’s what makes him a great coach. I think just having that comfortability to just continue to talk to him, having open conversation to what the locker room is thinking as well.”

Those decisions can be as far from the spotlight, such as when he pushed the offseason program back a month to give players more time to mentally recover from the long run to the Super Bowl, even at the expense of OTA practice time.

Or scaling back practices as the season progresses, nearly eliminating padded sessions, while giving every Monday following games off to players over the last month, regardless of outcome.

Or always stressing the offering of mental health services available in the building, if needed, including emphasizing the presence of team chaplain Vinny Rey, director of player relations Eric Ball and other mental health professionals to players this week.

Or encouraging players like Tee Higgins, DJ Reader and Stanley Morgan to miss practices as needed this year while dealing with personal issues.

There has been a standing order on the coaching staff that if your child’s recital or play interferes with a specific team event and you want to go, don’t hesitate. Don’t miss those moments.

It’s not just encouraging others in the building to take time for those important personal events. He’s been known to secretly show up to events he knows are important as a sign of support.

One team employee referred to him as being like Bill Murray in that way.

Genuine care and investment in the people can lead to enjoying the workplace and a connected team living happy, productive lives on and off the field.

Easier said than done. The desk of a head coach is filled with landmines and problems challenging the desired relationships every day. That’s where those closest view Taylor through a unique lens.

“He handles adversity the same way all the time,” Callahan said. “He handles difficult moments with the same class and grace and empathy from the smallest thing — from a player losing a grandparent having to leave for a funeral for a day to something as incredibly public as what happened on Monday. And I don’t think that you’re going to find too many people that can navigate situations with that sort of consistent demeanor all the time. And it never, ever changes, which I think is the most incredible part.”

Callahan said he’s never heard Taylor raise his voice. Taylor falls into a gentler, new-school image of NFL coaching that’s prevalent specifically the younger generation.

The foundational focus of players as people and not assets might have become commonplace in the hallways and offices of the facility, but the sheer horror of the scenes Monday required a different touch.

While CPR was being administered amid the terrifying scene, Bills players circled around Hamlin to block outside view of the unthinkable unfolding. Yet, one by one, Bills players walked away from the circle. They scattered themselves about the field, unloading emotions. Crouched down in one spot, rubbing fingers over eyebrows in disbelief. Another looking into the night sky, head in hands. Helmets scattered across the field. Grown men in shoulder pads hugging, crying and consoling each other away from the crowd.

They couldn’t watch. Horrified at what they were witnessing. Adult warriors, often viewed as superheroes, processing the unthinkable in front of 66,000 people and a national television audience.

These scenes defined this moment. Chilling. Overwhelming. Raw.

Taylor said he didn’t talk to anybody at that point, other than checking on his receiver, former University of Pittsburgh star Tyler Boyd, who relayed that he was extremely close with Hamlin.

“I’ve never been a part of something like that on the field,” Taylor said. “Again, there’s no protocols for that. It’s different when you’re on the field and can see the expressions and can feel the moment. That part was hard to process in real time.”

Yet, Taylor and McDermott had to.

On a conference call Monday night, NFL executives pointed out they were in constant communication with the coaches on the ground, that much of the directive was going to come from them.

Knowing McDermott’s need to be there for Hamlin influenced all decisions in the proper direction. But it took time. While Taylor, McDermott and NFL Chief Football Administrative Officer Dawn Aponte were on the phone with the league in front of the Bills locker room, they were surrounded by a crowd of staff members and decision-makers with an emotional Bills locker room still reeling inside those doors.

On his way back to the home locker room, Taylor ran into a group of the Bengals captains, led by Burrow, who wanted to speak with the Bills captains. The status of the game was still in doubt at that point and they wanted Buffalo’s players to know how the Bengals’ locker room felt. They felt they didn’t want to play.

“They told me they wanted to speak to their captains for the Bills, at the moment I wasn’t sure how to take that information, I wasn’t sure what the right thing to do was,” Taylor said. “I told that to Sean, Sean went and got his captains. When you saw both those groups interacting, you immediately knew that was the right decision. I think both sides needed that.”

After all the captains retreated to their locker rooms, the emotional Bengals players began to filter out in street clothes to the parking lot. A surreal procession of stunned men. Bills players sat in busses waiting for an eventual flight back to Orchard Park, N.Y.

There were countless piles of problems awaiting Taylor on his desk with the fallout from this game postponement causing an avalanche of issues. Plus, feelings of the same need to hug loved ones that the entire stadium felt after watching what transpired with Hamlin.

Those needed to wait.

Taylor got in his car and drove to the hospital.

He hoped to allow the family “to feel supported from those that are here locally and with the Bills and hopefully they are feeling that.”

Exactly one year prior to Monday, the Bengals topped the Chiefs in a Week 17 victory that served as a breakthrough moment for the franchise and a rebuild that looked bleak on multiple stops along the way.

Taylor broke down in tears in his postgame press conference after that game. Talk show hosts in Boston made fun of him for it. Not a soul inside the Bengals organization did. They valued his willingness to be human, to be himself no matter the situation. It proved foundational to building connection the players praised as pivotal to getting them to that point.

He fought back tears again Wednesday during an eight-minute monologue that opened his first public press conference since the event, offering prayers, privacy and respect to Hamlin and his family all while thanking in detail nearly every person associated with the process of handling the tragedy from medical professionals to game officials.

“There is a place for vulnerability in leadership and outwardly understanding being a really good leader usually stems from how much you care about the people that work for you and how you go about building an environment where people feel that,” Callahan said. “I don’t think you can be a connected team without the leadership that Zac has shown — to be able to feel that care, feel that genuineness, that sincerity, that integrity from the person that’s in charge.”

These characteristics haven’t always had a place in the conversation of football, much less the playing of it.

Times have changed. And Monday night changed the times.

Thankfully, Taylor was there as a leader to listen, adapt and assist in setting the compassionate tone for the league to follow Monday night and, hopefully, beyond.

“That is what real leadership is,” Callahan said. “It has nothing to do with X’s and O’s. It has nothing to do with how passionate you come across as a person. It’s how you handle people. And I think that’s always been Zac’s strength. And I think that he got to show everybody what that looks like in real-time.”

[MeatHeadbengal]

Welcome to the right side of the argument about Zac.

[Bengals1]

He's a very good human being but a lousy play-caller. Both can be true at the same time.