Duke Tobin Left Zac Taylor to Explain the Bengals’ Failed Trade and That's a PROBLEM

SPEAKER_1 (0:00)

Shaq here, what's it like to buy a car from Caravana 100% online and get it delivered to your door?

James Rapien (0:05)

Let me tell you.

Zac Taylor (0:06)

Your car is here, Mr. Shaq. Thank you, Mr. Caravana guy.

SPEAKER_1 (0:10)

Can't wait to take it for a spin. Only the best for you, Mr. Shaq. Hey, have you always been so big, tall and handsome? Not always, I was 6'10 once.

Zac Taylor (0:19)

Seven days delivered or returned, Mr. Shaq?

SPEAKER_1 (0:21)

Not that I would, you never do.

Zac Taylor (0:23)

No, I never do.

SPEAKER_1 (0:25)

So buy your car today on Caravana. Delivery fees may apply. See our seven-day return policy at caravana.com.

James Rapien (0:30)

I'm not comfortable doing it, but I'm gonna do what he asked. That's Zac Taylor on Duke Tobin and how Duke Tobin wanted Zac to portray the failed trade with the Eagles to the media on Wednesday. Plenty to dive into the failed trade. Duke Tobin, where the hell are you? Right now on Cincinnati Bengals Talk.

Welcome in to Cincinnati Bengals Talk. I'm James Rapien of bengalstalk.com. Make sure you hit that subscribe button and let's go. Let's do it. Let's talk about it. Because after Tuesday's deadline, a failure, make sure you check out End of the Jungle, Andrew and I went live for over an hour. A failure on Tuesday. Well, naturally, Duke Tobin after the botched trade, after the trade that should have been, after the trade that could have been, after the trade that they didn't realize impacted their compensatory pick formula. Oh my goodness, we're going to hear from a Comp Bic expert in a few minutes, by the way.

What in the world is going on? What in the world is going on at Paycore? Oh, well, clearly, Duke Tobin, the Bengals director of player personnel, the pseudo GM, the de facto GM, will explain it, especially if he's apologizing to Zac Taylor. This quote from Zac Taylor, it happened, it's so noteworthy, a few notes, because you've probably heard it by now, we put it on the channel.

Zac Taylor's comments did not come because he was asked about the trade, or what went wrong, or the trade deadline. He was asked about the edge room, how he feels about edge. And he, boom, went into this, this explainer where he clearly makes it crystal that Duke Tobin wanted him to portray it a certain way to the media. And Zac Taylor is not comfortable with it because he went out of his way to say how uncomfortable he was.

Zac Taylor (2:26)

Obviously, we tried something yesterday and Duke was very explicit with me when he came and spoke to me of how he wanted this portrayed. And I'm not comfortable doing it, but I'm going to do what he asked, you know. And we did make an effort to kind of put some depth in there in place of Cassius.

As we got into it, obviously, it was going to be a little more costly than we initially anticipated. So he's really apologetic about it and wants to make clear. Philly was a great trade partner. It was on our end. And that's just the way things go. But certainly have a ton of confidence in our front office and how they do things. And they've given us the players that have allowed us to be 6 and 2 right now and playing at such a high level. So we'll put that behind us and move forward and just get excited for this game on Sunday. And our locker room is a great place right now.

James Rapien (3:10)

Man, the beginning of that and Zac reels it back in. He reels it back in and he's believe in the front office and they've got us all these parts. And by the way, they did. They nailed the offseason. I keep hearing that James, you're being too negative. You're negative, negative. You're being too negative. The offseason was great. It's not the offseason, it's November. You're picking out turkeys. You think I give a damn about April?

Not when you're picking out turkeys and you're, hey, you might be listening to Christmas music right now. You might be doing that. Andrew better not be listening to Christmas music right now. I know he's, I know him too well for that. He's not doing that right now. But the bottom line is Duke Tobin should have spoke. That's the bottom line. I tweeted out about it, by the way. I made that very clear. Cause I was like, you know what? I'm going to take a shot at Duke. Just a little, little fun shot. I basically said it because Joe Goodbear's like, Hey, Duke Tobin better speak tomorrow. And I was like, well, and this is after the failed trade. I was like, well, Arnold Ebiketie, after the deadline, Arnold Ebiketie has a better chance of being a bangle. I knew Duke Tobin wasn't going to speak. And the fact that Zac Taylor, the head coach, the man that has always defended the process, oh, you're not going to get to talk to him essentially. And that, not that Zac has ever said that, but he's been okay being up there and saying that. For him to take a shot at Duke, there was clearly a disagreement there. And here's how it should have been handled, ladies and gentlemen. And I don't know why they didn't do this. And maybe it's because they think, all right, it's gonna blow over anyway, which fine. Fine, like you think so. Every trade deadline forever is going to be talking about this. It's going to get brought up year after year after year after year after year. And so maybe they think, well, putting Duke up there is not gonna make it any better. But it would have been way easier and it would have been better. Like if you respect Zac, screw the PR part of it. If you respect Zac, don't make him do it. Don't put him in that position. And so have Duke come in as Zac is coming in and say, hey, real quick, before Zac talks, yesterday we had a trade with the Eagles in place. We didn't realize at the time, we were so excited to get that deal done and excited about adding to our team and our six and two and excited about everything that we were doing, that we let it slip through the cracks, that it was gonna impact our compensatory pick formula. The moment we realized that, we reeled it back and we made a mistake. And that's on me and it's unacceptable, but it's on me. And that being said, we are really focused on winning the Super Bowl this year. We have a hell of a football team. We believe in the guys we have. We just really liked the player and we were trying to get him and it didn't work out and that's okay. We are in great shape. And so I'm going to turn it over to Zac, but thank you very much. And again, this is something that shouldn't have happened and it won't happen again. Period. Done. Just fixed it. I just ad-libbed it. You don't answer questions, you get up there, you're talking to the mic, you look at the camera, bang, bang, bang, boom, done. And instead now, everybody, me, and rightfully so by the way, Zach, how uncomfortable are you? Why the hell would they do that to you?