First featured on NBC Sports Bay Area: How Bengals’ Zac Taylor used 49ers as blueprint for Cincinnati’s progress
There are many similarities between Bengals coach Zac Taylor’s early achievements in Cincinnati and what Kyle Shanahan accomplished with the 49ers.
And the explanation for that is quite straightforward. Taylor, who was brought on by the Bengals prior to the 2019 NFL season, modelled Cincinnati’s development into a consistent AFC challenger by studying Shanahan and the 49ers.
“You had an opportunity to witness their systems’ evolution while I was in Los Angeles in 2017,” Taylor informed reporters on Wednesday. “Shanahan joined the 49ers during that time.” “They made it to the Super Bowl in their third year despite having quarterback injuries and other issues in the first two years. I recall showcasing to our troops the general development of San Francisco in 2020.
“In their first year of learning the system, you could occasionally tell the men were in the learning phase because some of the sharpness wasn’t there. Things really picked up in the second year. Then I played highlights from their Super Bowl matchup with Kansas City, explaining to them why they had made it this far—their attention to detail, their overall quality, and the idea that “hey, this is part of our process.”
When Shanahan was hired by the 49ers as coach and John Lynch as general manager in 2017, Taylor was the assistant wide receivers coach for the Los Angeles Rams. Before joining the Bengals, Taylor coached the quarterbacks in Los Angeles for 2018.
Taylor thus had a close-up view of how a youthful coach might lay the groundwork for long-term success.
In Shanahan’s first two seasons in Santa Clara, the 49ers struggled a combined 10-22. However, in his third season, they went 13-3 and advanced to the Super Bowl, where they were heartbrokenly defeated by the Kansas City Chiefs.
The trajectory Taylor took in Cincinnati is uncannily similar. Before making it to the Super Bowl in 2021 and losing to his old team, the Rams, the Bengals had gone 6-25-1 in his first two seasons in the league.
“Our first year, we weren’t very good, our attention to detail wasn’t great, our level of coaching at times wasn’t great, 2020 we made some progress and then here’s the step we’ve got to make in 2021,” Taylor stated to reporters. This area has a route. San Francisco is kind of demonstrating to folks how it may happen via a certain approach. And sure enough, there was probably footage of our third-year Super Bowl game being shown somewhere.
“Therefore, I’ve always thought of San Francisco as a fantastic model for how to develop, how to keep evolving, how to reach your goals, and how to stay relatively consistent. In a sense, they have set the bar for that. From 2019 until today, they have consistently remained at that level. They’ve performed admirably with John Lynch and Kyle Shanahan in Super Bowl and [conference] championship games.”
Although both the 49ers and the Bengals lost in their respective conference championship games, they were headed for a Super Bowl meeting in the previous season.
Although both the 49ers and the Bengals lost in their respective conference championship games, they were headed for a Super Bowl meeting in the previous season.
These days, both clubs are attempting to relive that magic and go far in the playoffs. However, the Bengals have had a difficult start to the 2023 campaign and have a 3-3 record going into their encounter at Levi’s Stadium on Sunday, despite victories against the Seattle Seahawks and Arizona Cardinals. Despite having a 5-2 record going into the game, the 49ers have lost two consecutive.
Shanahan and the 49ers are hoping that they have a game plan that Taylor and company can’t match when they take on the Bengals on Sunday.
