Cincinnati Bengals head coach Zac Taylor will try to make history today in Super Bowl 56. He is perhaps the only head coach in professional sports history to have coached for a future U.S. senator (Tommy Tuberville) and for his championship opponent (Sean McVay). He is also one of the youngest head coaches in Super Bowl history. How did Taylor get here at such a young age?
Zac Taylor’s unique path to Super Bowl 56
It would have been hard to imagine Taylor and the Bengals reaching the title game only two seasons after starting 0-11 and finishing 2-14. The inauspicious start for the 36-year-old first-time head coach proved to be a blip. The poor finish enabled the franchise to select QB Joe Burrow No. 1 overall in the 2020 NFL Draft.
In Burrow’s rookie campaign, a Week 11 leg injury knocked him out for the rest of the season, while starting RB Joe Mixon was lost after Week 6. As a result, Cincinnati limped to a 4-11-1 record.
Most head coaches starting their careers 6-25-1 might be on the chopping block. Instead, with all core offensive playmakers healthy to begin the 2021 season and with the arrival of generational rookie talent WR Ja’Marr Chase, Taylor found himself coaching an elite-level nucleus rivaling that of any other NFL team.
En route to Super Bowl 56, Taylor had to vanquish Ryan Tannehill and the Titans. Taylor was Tannehill’s QB coach when both were with the Dolphins. He now must defeat McVay, for whom he worked as a member of the Rams coaching staff in 2017 and 2018,= and coached with in LA’s Super Bowl 53 loss to the Patriots.
One of the youngest Super Bowl head coaches in history
Taylor will be 39 years old on May 10. If the Bengals win today, he’ll be the second-youngest Super Bowl champion, two years older than Steelers head coach Mike Tomlin, who was only 36 when his team won Super Bowl 43. He’s also the fourth-youngest NFL head coach to appear in a Super Bowl (McVay, Tomlin, and the Steelers’ Bill Cowher are the others). After today, McVay will be the only head coach with two Super Bowl appearances before his 40th birthday.
It’s important to note that Burrow and Mixon are 25. Tee Higgins is 23. Chase is 21. Tyler Boyd and C.J. Uzomah are still in their 20s, too. Given the extraordinary talent and youth of the Bengals’ offensive core, Taylor has a decent shot of matching McVay’s feat.