01-23-2021, 08:21 PM
Keeping Zac Taylor on will have negative consequences that will last well after he is gone. The players just witnessed a HC who was historically bad retain his job. They also witnessed some less than professional behavior from some of the older players on his watch. Green made no attempt to tackle on an interception and was rewarded by being fed targets for most of the year. Dunlap tried to force the issue of a trade and was rewarded by going to a better team. The message from ownership is that it is perfectly OK to have extremely poor results IF you can think of some decent excuses. Players will emulate this logic by nursing injuries for longer than they have to, using sporadic good play to excuse bad play, and generally having a mindset of being comfortable with losing to good teams so long as they can beat up on the basement dwellers every once in a while. By doubling down on a mistake and refusing to pay a staff to not coach, ownership has likely caused a new generation of promising players to readjust their hyper-competitive mentality to one of semi-complacency. It'll be even worse than the one that festered under .5 Marv, and it'll linger for as long as the complacency with poor results is still fresh in players' minds.
