Press Conference: Zac Taylor Reacts to Bengals Stunning WIN Over Steelers on Thursday Night Football

Zac Taylor (0:00)

I'm really proud of our guys. We've sat in these locker rooms the last four weeks and talked about the guys are putting in the right work, they're about the right stuff, we got the right people in the locker room. And when you get to enjoy that feeling, I know it's just an early September feeling, this is in December, January, but it's still meaningful. And these guys earned it because they just kept plugging along. And they've known that we're close to these games, that's a good football team. So to be two and over the division, right in the thick of everything that we've been talking about, with another home game coming up, chance to get healthy this next couple of days, really, really just proud of the guys and the effort and happy to get a win.

SPEAKER_2 (0:36)

How much confidence do you have?

Zac Taylor (0:39)

Outstanding. Outstanding. Outstanding. Yeah, Joe, I mean, it was outstanding, really. I mean, we're, I mean, we, how many drives, we scored on what, like six of the last seven drives, maybe? Seven of the last eight? What, seven of eight? Okay. So, and really early on, we had some, some drops and some quirky stuff happen that prevented a score there. So just thought his performance was outstanding, very, very calm, collected, led us in a two minute drive to go in the game with a huge go ball to tee, gave those guys a chance to go make some plays and impressed with his performance. I thought our offense line played outstanding. I mean, that defensive line has been wreaking havoc the last couple of weeks on all the film we've watched of all these other teams. Our line gave him a great shot. Our tight ends did an unbelievable job in the run game as well. And everybody stepped up for senior yards after the catch. So just collectively on offense, it was great. The defense getting that big stop at the end. I know the Hell Marys, I've seen Aaron Rogers throw a lot of Hell Marys in his life for touchdowns. And so I was glad they were able to prevent that.

SPEAKER_3 (1:37)

You've seen a lot of great, great performance. Yeah.

Zac Taylor (1:47)

I mean, he just, he comes up so big in those moments. And he's so hard to bring down. So it's not even the catches. Sometimes it's the yards after the catch. So every time he gets the ball in the hands, it energizes the whole stadium because everybody thinks he's about to score. And just I thought all those guys stepped up. You asked about Ja'Marr in a franchise record, 16 catches in a game of this magnitude is spectacular.

SPEAKER_2 (2:10)

Zac, your emotions touched on Friday's scores that put them up and then going back to offense. Did you just put one switch in the top and drive together?

Zac Taylor (2:18)

Yeah, we did. I mean, the one drive, we got a little stagnant. I wanted to continue to be aggressive and throw the football. It's stuck between running the clock and still being aggressive. We want to be aggressive. It didn't go our way. We had to punt. And again, just thought it was a great job by those guys getting it together on the last drive.

SPEAKER_5 (2:36)

Do you have a calling for whoever to go down there?

Zac Taylor (2:39)

Yeah, we did. Yes, we did. Yes, we did.

SPEAKER_6 (2:43)

For the last couple weeks here, we've asked you a lot about the running. You said it really needs to get going. How happy were you to see that?

Zac Taylor (2:50)

Really happy. I mean, you could just feel the energy from our whole line, our tight ends, our backs. Did a great job. And we called a lot more runs and we spit them out to Ja'Marr for some major yardage there. And I can't wait to see what the yardage was on a lot of the run plays we called through touchdown on one, for sure. And several others were working through some run alerts and Ja'Marr got some great production there. So the statistics won't say run plays on those. For us, that's coming off the run game. They got to defend it and they give us opportunities. That's a great way to get Ja'Marr some easy touches where the line doesn't have to pass protect. So for us, that's even more really rushing yardage.

SPEAKER_5 (3:25)

I know it's a long season.

SPEAKER_7 (3:28)

Just how big of a win?

Zac Taylor (3:29)

It's a huge win. We needed this. We just, it had been too long since we've won.