Another Zachtastrophe to start out a season: The Bengals are in trouble

On Monday Night, the Bengals were facing a rookie quarterback who had not done much with his arm in his first two games of the season. The Bengals, as they always seem to do, had started another season off 2-0 but had righted the ship in previous years. This looked like it would be the case again, as Jamar Chase caught a long bomb for a touchdown to give the Bengals a quick 7-0 lead.

Unfortunately for the Bengals, that would be as good as it would get as Jayden Daniels went from being a struggling rookie quarterback to a future Hall of Famer. At least that’s what he looked like on Monday Night as he sliced and diced the Bengals’ defense all night, scoring on every drive.

For all the talk about how the Bengals organization has changed, it really hasn’t. Sure, they pay some guys nowadays, but in a lot of cases, they pay the wrong guys. If you look at the defense, Jessie Bates and DJ Reader were considered expendable, and now it looks like that was a huge miscalculation.

Another huge miscalculation was in the NFL Draft, as the Bengals drafted Myles Murphy, who has been a complete bust. Don’t even get me started on the offensive line swings and misses over the last decade, which is why the Bengals offensive line still struggles. The play-calling is terrible on offense, and last night’s defensive scheme looked like a junior high team seeing a true passing team for the first time.

Head Coach Zach Taylor starts every season like this, and it all starts out the same way: Taylor doesn’t give his players much preseason playing time. Once the regular season starts, the team looks disorganized for the first couple of weeks as they get their bearings straight. Unfortunately, this time may not end up well for the Bengals. This team has issues, and those issues point back to one thing.

That one thing is the Bengals’ smallest scouting department in the league. The Bengals have eight people on their scouting staff, six of whom are full-time. The average AFC North team has a scouting staff of between 30 and 40! So they pay some players nowadays, but they are still run like a mom-and-pop shop, which is unacceptable for a business worth over two Billion dollars.

Sure, it was a great story a few years back when the Bengals struck Gold and got Joe Burrow, but remember, they got him because they were the worst team in the league, and luckily, he was a no-brainer pick. They had a lot of young talent come together simultaneously, and they were relevant for a few years. It’s too bad that in the NFL Super Bowl windows close fast if you have a bad couple of drafts and don’t replace the players you are losing and never upgrade a bad offensive line.

This 0-3 start seems like a bad time to ask for one billion to renovate the Bengals stadium. Sure, they have Joe Burrow, but they have a subpar coach and the smallest scouting staff in the NFL. Hell, how about renovating the scouting staff to 35? That’s more needed than a billion-dollar subsidy from Hamilton County for a renovated stadium.

Maybe the season is not dead. They have come back from a bad start before, but this feels different. With Chase and Higgins both unhappy, this team feels like it may be falling back into the abyss it used to be mired in. Remember, if Joe Burrow did not fall into Zach Taylor’s lap, Taylor would be an assistant coach somewhere by now.

If you are a Bengals fan, you know the scouting staff will not be increased, and you know the Bengals will do what they always do—stick their heads in the sand. In that time, they will still be waiting on a billion-dollar taxpayer-subsidized renovation. The more things change, the more they stay the same.