Three years ago.

[Shake n Blake]

(11-12-2021, 10:22 AM)TecmoBengals Wrote: Bringing up how Marvin didn't have the benefit of free agency since Zac is the first Bengals coach to benefit from the Brown family embracing free agency isn't really a necessary talking point when comparing the two coaches. This take is rooted in my opinion that Marvin was a far better coach than Zac Taylor currently is and likely turns out to be based on W/L %.

Marvin Lewis:
Games - 256
Wins - 131
Losses - 122
Ties - 3
W/L % - .518

Zac Taylor:
Games - 41
Wins - 11
Losses - 29
Ties - 1
W/L % - .280

This info is from: https://www.pro-football-reference.com/teams/cin/coaches.htm

Zac has a ways to go to join the Bengals coaches who hovered around the .500 mark: Marvin Lewis, Sam Wyche, Forrest Gregg, Bill Johnson, and Paul Brown. Zac is among the ranks of Dick LeBeau, Bruce Coslet, David Shula, and Homer Rice as coaches with really bad W/L records (1992 to 2002 was a horrible time to be a Bengals fan).

Note, I do think it was time to move on from Marvin Lewis, so my claim that he is better than Zac is not an endorsement for Marvin's continued tenure. Time will tell if the Bengals landed a gem with Zac, but it isn't looking good. As fredtoast implies, or maybe stated if I overlooked his post, Marvin might have had even a better chance at winning if the Brown family embraced spending big dollars in free agency during his coaching tenure.

As of now, Zac needs about 13 to 15 seasons of 15 wins a year to equal Marvin's franchise coaching records of 256 wins. Some of us on this forum will be dead from old age by the time Zac can accomplish such a goal.

This would be fair if both came into similar situations. They did not.

Marvin came in to a situation with young ascending talent like Chad, P-Dub, Housh, Rudi, a good offensive line, etc. He even kept the OC. He just needed to rebuild the defense via FA and make the obvious choice with Palmer at #1.

Zac came into a situation where most of the "talent" was washed up or a poor fit. AJ Green, Geno, Dunlap, Burfict, Dalton, etc. A horrible o-line. It all needed to go.

Marvin needed to reshape the defense, but Zac had to reshape the entire team.

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So... Zac really didn't get to see the fruits of his labor until year 3. Again, I hold Marv in higher regard than Zac right now, but I also think it's a little unfair to try and compare the 2019-2020 teams to the 2003-2004 teams as if it was an apples to apples comparison. It's really not.