Zac Taylor had spent six weeks hammering situational football into the Bengals, and on Sunday that work showed up in the kind of drive that can flatten a comeback before it starts.
Cincinnati had Tampa Bay on the ropes late in a season-opening 33-27 win at Paycor Stadium, but the Buccaneers had trimmed the margin to six with 3:19 left and still had a shot if they could force a stop against Joe Burrow. Instead, Taylor chose aggression over caution on second-and-10 from the Tampa Bay 44, dialing up a slant to Tee Higgins. Higgins climbed for Burrow’s fastball with Zyon McCollum draped on him and came down with the ball for an 18-yard gain that essentially ended it.
“I’m glad you reminded me of that, because I forgot about that play and meant to bring it up to the team,” Taylor said after a reporter asked him about it in the postgame news conference. “That’s as big time of a catch as you’re ever going to see.”
The drive was the cleanest possible example of what Taylor and the Bengals had been drilling throughout camp: understand the situation, manage the clock, and keep control of the game. The goal was to use the four-minute offense to either get close enough for a field goal and make it a two-score game or drain the clock completely and leave Baker Mayfield without a final chance.
“We’ve done that exact drill many times in training camp,” Taylor said. “There are times we got in four-minute mode or three-minute mode against our defense and got heavy and ran the ball, then we are punting with 2:30 left.”
This time, though, the Bengals didn’t just rehearse the situation - they executed it with variety and poise. Taylor opened the possession with back-to-back passes against a heavy Tampa Bay look that was expecting the run.
First came a throw to Dohnte Meyers, the offseason feelgood story, for his first target of the day. Meyers made a man miss and turned it into 18 yards.
Samaje Perine then entered for Chase Brown, and Burrow hit him on a short pass that became another 14-yard gain to the Tampa Bay 44. After a Brown run that went nowhere, Burrow went back to the air and found Higgins for the biggest play of the day.
“We came out with more of an aggressive mindset,” Taylor said. “We did this drill against Chicago (in the joint practice), which I think was really helpful, watching how they did it and watching how we did it.”
There was discipline throughout the rest of the march, too. Meyers could have tried for more than 18 yards on his catch but wisely went down to stay in bounds. Later, Brown bounced a run around right end and could have hunted the first-down marker, but he let the defender finish the tackle because Tampa Bay had no timeouts left.
“Credit to our guys for understanding how we wanted to run the clock there while still getting maximum yardage,” Taylor said. “Situationally, our guys did some things we worked on for a long time.
They managed it really well. We finished with a quarterback sneak and a kneel.
“As you can see, I’m really proud,” Taylor added. “We talked about these situations a million times, and these guys nailed it.”
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