Locked On Bengals - Daily Podcast On The Cincinnati Bengals - RUNNING IT BACK: Bengals Owner Mike Brown Throws Support Behind Zac Taylor and Duke Tobin

Starting point is 00:00:00 For the second time of the Zach Taylor era in Cincinnati, a failed season has prompted a postseason message of support from Bengals owner Mike Brown. The difference this time, Duke Tobin included. Let's break it down. You are Locked on Bengals, your daily Cincinnati Bengals podcast. Part of the Locked On Podcast Network, your team every day. What up Bengals fans and welcome to another episode of the Locked on Bengals podcast. Part of the Locked on podcast network, the number one, Podcast Network. He's James Rapine. I'm Jake. Let's go and we are locked on Bengals and we have

Starting point is 00:00:41 been since 2016, which makes us the 10th year anniversary of the Lockdown Bengals program, which I just realized as we're still here early in 2026. And well, James and I have you covered here every day. The everydayers out there already know that and everyone who makes locked on Bengals their first listen has heard me say these words many times over the years. Welcome back to another episode of Lockdown Bengals. Today we're diving into the statement from Mike Brown issuing support for Zach Taylor and Duke Tobin. The last time we heard from Mike Brown in a postseason statement like this was after another failed season, throwing his support behind Zach Taylor.

Starting point is 00:01:22 That was rewarded the following year. We'll see if that's the case this time around. And that's the state of the Bengals organization right now. We expected that Zach will be back. Of course, we've talked about that in recent weeks. We thought that there was a very minuscule chance, if at all, essentially, that Duke Tobin's job was safe. We thought Duke Tobin's job was safe. Any chance of changes there were minuscule, is what I'm trying to say.

Starting point is 00:01:46 And Mike Brown today throwing his support behind the Bengals head coach and director of player personnel slash de facto GM, whatever you want to call him. And while it's expected, it is noteworthy that Brown is naming both of them. it shows a bit of awareness of where the criticisms are. Maybe he saw the billboards out there. I don't know. And that's the state of things here is the Bengals are getting into their end of season interviews with their players and everything as they're closing down shop on the 20, 25 season. Yeah, I just got out of the lacquerum a little bit ago. And a lot of players packing up, getting ready to leave, leaving, having their exit meetings.

Starting point is 00:02:26 You obviously have the exit physicals, all of those things. And as I was driving to the stadium, this stadium, or this statement put out. I'm going to read it word for word, especially for our audio audience that's out there that hasn't seen this, hasn't read it. Mike Brown saying, quote, we came into the season with high expectations

Starting point is 00:02:45 coming off of four straight winning seasons with leaders in place that took us to a Super Bowl in two AFC championship games. We know this season has been frustrating and disappointing. The results feel short of our standards and missing the playoffs again proves there is more work to do. Our focus is on building a team that can consistently compete at the highest

Starting point is 00:03:03 level with the goal of winning championships. After thoughtful consideration, I am confident that Duke Tobin and Zach Taylor are the right leaders to guide us forward. They have proven they can build and lead teams that compete for championships. We trust their plans and expect to return to our desired level of success. We are taking a hard look at everything we do as we approach the offseason with focused determination to build a championship caliber roster that wins consistently. We are fully committed to delivering results that match the pride, passion, and expectations

Starting point is 00:03:33 of this organization and our fans and our fans. Jake, the first thing that I think is, it stands out to me, and I mentioned it yesterday to you, not on the show, but it is nitpicky, but it's real. The glory days that everyone's referring to now still ended in losses. I just want to point it out. Like, I know it was way better than what they've been, but it's not like they went back to back in 21 and 22. And the idea, my standard is, and I think that's what they mean and they don't want to come out and say,

Starting point is 00:04:07 the standard should be winning the whole damn thing. Not competing, not being close, not having a shot. And I get it. In reality, you just hope to be there in late January with a shot. Like, that's how hard it is in the NFL. But first things first, what they're doing by bringing Zach and Duke back is saying, all right, we want Zach Duke in this entire organization to do something now. in year eight together that we've never done in 60 years.

Starting point is 00:04:36 And so nearly 60 years. So that's what I want to point out first before we dive into the decision and all of those things. They've never done what they've needed to do. They've never gotten to that mountain top. And so you're confident that these guys can get here. That's what you're saying is these two give you the best chance. And obviously that's how they feel based on that state.

Starting point is 00:04:55 I mean, realistically, like you said, very few head coaches are retaining. based on the standard of if you win the Super Bowl, you get to keep your job, and if you lose the Super Bowl or come up short of that mark, you lose your job. It happens sometimes. Andy Reid comes to mind in Philadelphia, the run of playoff runs that they had, and they just never got over the hump. And at some point, they decided enough was enough. And Andy Reid went to Kansas City, and obviously he's had a success there.

Starting point is 00:05:23 So this happens sometimes where there are a number of playoff runs that come up just short. that's not where they are in Cincinnati. Obviously, that is not the standard for ownership. And there are extenuating circumstances in Cincinnati, too. Joe's been dealing with health issues, and that's certainly part of why they fall in short of expectations in a couple of these seasons. Last year, 2024, I guess now last year is 2025 for the Bengals.

Starting point is 00:05:53 2024, a bit of an exception, right? This is perhaps the biggest failure of this. team in the Zach Taylor era as they get Joe Burrow healthy for a full season and they finish nine and eight miss a playoffs this season you lose Joe for a lot of the season again extenuating circumstances from ownership's point of view i imagine and and Joe's talked a lot about this himself his need to stay healthy and when he's not healthy you know he can't help the team win that being said we're going to spend a lot of time this off season talking about the roster being good enough to not be entirely reliant on Joe Burrow again which

Starting point is 00:06:28 it has been for the entire Joe Burrow era. So on the one hand, I kind of get where ownership is coming from here. On the other hand, I don't care that I understand where they're coming from here. Like, yeah, I can see their perspective. Sure. I can understand that. I can put myself in their shoes. I can understand their thought process.

Starting point is 00:06:50 But I think this is the only place in the league where this would happen. There were six head coaches fired. so far in the coaching cycle as we record this. And we never thought that Zach Taylor will be one of them ever since we learned about the remaining years on his contract. And that was a Paul Dana report about a month ago. But the standard should be higher. I feel like the standard needs to be for the Bengals at least that they have contending aspirations every single year. And every single year that they miss the playoffs, they don't have contending aspirations.

Starting point is 00:07:28 Even when you make the playoffs, and I'm talking about you, Pittsburgh, you don't have contending aspirations. But you've won the division, at least. The Bengals haven't even hit that level in the last three years. Yeah, it's bad division. They've made so many mistakes. And I think that's the issue is, and the reason why people question, do they want to win or not? They fell into Orlando Brown Jr. three years ago now, where they had, they completely had whifted free agency, ladies and gentlemen, lost Jesse, lost Vaughn, somehow got Jermaine back.

Starting point is 00:08:07 And it was like, oh my God, like, what are they doing? Remember? We were like, what are they doing? And then Orlando Brown Jr., Jake goes on the date, every day or no, the infamous date, and Orlando Brown Jr. signs, it's because he reached out. Like, that's why I keep going back to is it's, it isn't just Zach. For those of you that are pro Zach, I understand the logic, because it's not just Zach. To me, it's not just Duke, and I get some criticism for that, but I understand it. It's not just Duke. It's everything.

Starting point is 00:08:39 And the only way now, by bringing Duke back and by bringing Zach back and by not tweaking Duke's role at all, it's all in on, all right, well, we are going to add more talent. We have to add more proven talent. And it goes back to what Joe said before, or after Sunday's game, before any of this was official, even though we knew it was going to. happen. And so that's, that's it is like, all right, well, then how do you get better? Because they're not going to have a better head coach. The evaluation, the evaluators are going to be the same. So where do you get better? How do you do it? How do you get to that championship level? That's really hard to get to. It's hard. And these games are decided. Think back to a few. They're decided by one play, two plays. And you need to have the players that are going to make those

Starting point is 00:09:29 plays and the Bengals have not for three straight years now. And that's why they are where they are. And they need to make some changes. Obviously, they aren't making changes here. They are tweaking their schedule, which I think is noteworthy. We are going to, well, have not just Zach Taylor on on Monday. We have another person that we're going to hear from later this week. We'll dive into that as we roll on right here on Lockdown Bengals. Today's show is brought to you by Zach. Doc. Look, if you're like me. One, finding a doctor is painful and it takes so much time. It's like finding a diamond in the rough. It's finding a doctor is how the Bengals treat free agency where it's like so hard and impossible to like finding a doctor actually is that a reliable one that you can trust. Well,

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Starting point is 00:12:35 I think it's that kind of game. Why would they partner with us if they didn't give everyone a fair shot of this thing? Oh, no, I think it's a fair shot. Look at you. Look at you. But my point is the Bengals are trying, you're going way to. Anyways, we're going to hear from Duke Tobin this week. And we never hear from Duke Tobin at the end of seasons.

Starting point is 00:12:56 Usually we don't hear from him until the combine. I think this is really smart. There's a lot of questions about Duke. There's a lot of frustrations. All of them are noteworthy. It isn't just Duke. It's everybody. I say that and people think I'm absolving Duke.

Starting point is 00:13:10 No, I'm not. I feel like I've been over the top about my criticism of the Demetrius night pick, but it was also an insane pick in the moment. And I remember in the moment when I knew it was coming down, being like, why would you do that? And it's nothing personal with Demetrius. but a 25-year-old linebacker in round two is not what winning teams do.

Starting point is 00:13:32 It's just not. And that kind of rhymed, it might have rhymed, it's just not. And so we're going to hear from Duke Tobin on Friday. He's going to talk at one. And really an unprecedented post-end-of-season meeting with the media, which I think is good, because I do think that that means that the Bengals have heard the grapes, but with media fans, they understand them at least to this extent, so much so that they're going to put Duke Dobin in the room on that right now at the podium.

Starting point is 00:14:04 It's always interesting with Duke talks. There's a couple of things here. First, in the statement from Mike Brown, it names Duke and Zach, and it names him as a duo. That specific combination is what gets Mike Brown's support. Previously when we heard from Mike Brown, it was Zach Taylor getting his support after a bad season. and them trusting Zach to figure out the way forward after 2020.

Starting point is 00:14:29 This is the first time that Duke's really been in this situation, and we've talked about the cracks in that foundation and the way that some of the scouts were talking after the draft, the mini restructure of the personnel department after the draft where they promoted their two directors to assistant GMs, even though they have no GM, and Trey Brown also got an assistant or assistant GM title. So they have three assistant GMs now, no real GM, and the director of player personnel.

Starting point is 00:14:58 So that's hilarious. But they had this little restructure of the front office. We heard a lot of the scouts in this front office talking about why Duke is making the decisions. And there's that little bit of different language that sounded like there were some differences of opinion on draft day. And I think that we believe there was a fair bit of differences of opinion. opinions that Duke ultimately had to make the call on draft day. And then you get the follow-up of Mike Brown, including Duke Tobin in this statement. Yes, it is a statement of support, but also you could take it as, and I do want to get to like what my expectations are for Duke's pressors as well.

Starting point is 00:15:43 But you can take the coupling of these two guys in the statement of supposed support as also like, yeah, I get it. Like, yeah, Duke does need to get this right. They're on notice. It is just as much of as a, yeah, you have your jobs for 2026. We think you can get this right. But if you don't, dot, dot, dot, dot. You know what I mean? Yeah.

Starting point is 00:16:07 And by the way, that better be how it is. I don't care about contracts. I don't care about anything. I do not care. If we are sitting here a year from now and it's, even if they sneak into the wild card, right, or something like that. And they aren't a dominant 12 and 5, 13 and 4. Like, that's the standard when you have Joe Burrow.

Starting point is 00:16:31 Google Peyton Manning in the Indianapolis Colts in the early 2000s when they weren't winning Super Bowls, but what were they doing? And that's the point. The standard, those seasons felt disappointing. They were winning double-digit games every year. Double-digit games paying two receivers and having Edron James doing this. Maybe they didn't win it all, and they kept running into Tom Brady over and over.

Starting point is 00:16:51 over and over, but they were getting there. And that's like the Colts are a comparable like franchise, I think, pre-manning to pre-burrow. And so what's the standard? Well, the standard should be, especially in a year like this where you win the division. And so, yeah, they should be on notice. And even if we're talking about a winning season or even winning the division but coming up short. Like that needs to be the standard now. This can't be like an 09 season in 2026. And there's plenty of time to discuss that. But you go playoffless 06, 07, 08, you go

Starting point is 00:17:31 playoffless 22, 23, 24, 25. Then you win the division and suddenly everything's rosy. Well, it won't be rosy if you don't get that Lombardi or if you don't advance in the playoffs and you're not right there again. Like Joe's standard, I'll go back to Joe because all this is dependent on Joe. Mike Brown doesn't matter if Joe isn't here. Duke Tobin doesn't matter if Joe isn't here. So you need to make sure that you're all in on that. And so, yeah, they should very much be on notice because you can't just keep running it back in this Joe Burrow era. You have to do more.

Starting point is 00:18:04 You have to evolve to win. Going back to your comparison to Peyton Manning, the first three years of Joe Burroughs career, pretty in line with the first few years of Peyton Manning's career, struggled. The team struggled in his first year. Second year, Peyton Manning's Colts go 13 to 3. third year they go 10 and 6 and then they stumble in 2001 they go 6 and 10 and guess what the colts said they fired jim mora they did they hire they bring in tony dungy and then they went 10 and 6 12 and 4 12 and 4 14 and 2 12 and 4 13 and 3 12 and 4 14 and 2 10 and 6 in in Peyton's last year in

Starting point is 00:18:39 in indianapolis in 2010 wow and they had to change a head coach to do it but okay they got there Correct. The stumble for the Bengals in 2023 at 5 and 5, and in 2024, 9 and 8, has been met with the Bengals going, technically Joe's QB record this year, apparently 5 and 3, according to pro football reference. Well, because he went 2 and 0 before he came back. Right. But none of this is 12 and 4 bare minimum every single year from 2003.

Starting point is 00:19:18 to 2009 with Peyton manning a quarterback for the Colts. That is where the Bengal standard should be. Yes. And if you don't get there, every single year. Perfect blueprint. Yeah. You're not doing enough. And then as soon as they went 10 to 6, guess what happened?

Starting point is 00:19:33 The Colts blew it up. And Peyton had the neck injury in 2011. But that was it. As soon as they fell short of 12 wins, that was it. Yeah. And yeah, the manning neck injury was part of a big part of that, obviously. But the point is obvious. Like that's where it should be.

Starting point is 00:19:50 That's the bar. And it's fallen so short, not a little short. That's why, like, I think people are like, oh, well, Zach's a good guy and this and that, like, fine, but something has to change because it's not working. And so, again, they're saying that these two guys are it. Well, we'll see. We're going to talk to Duke Friday. We hear from Zach on Monday.

Starting point is 00:20:10 You have some thoughts on Duke talking as well. So we'll get to those. And more. Of course, there's more. There's going to be more. There's going to be a busy off season, Jake. We'll continue coming up next. Today's show is brought to you by Fandall.

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Starting point is 00:21:37 from Bengals' front office decision makers. And so this is a sea level change. By the way, if you are in every day, you're interested in an ad-free version of this program, check out lockdownbengles. com. There's a everydayer club that is now real. It also comes with access to a member-only Discord.

Starting point is 00:21:55 So if you're interested in an ad-free version of Lockdown Bengals, an audio-ad-free version of Lockdown Bengals all offseason, Supercast, sorry, lockdownbengels.com. You always do that. The URL gets confused in my head. Locktownbengles. Dot supercast.com. What's interesting to me about when Duke Tobin talks is who his audience is.

Starting point is 00:22:17 I think he's really good. at controlling what exactly he says, what questions he answers, and what points he wants to make. I think he goes into these meetings with the media with an agenda in mind every time. And go back to last year's combine, the statements he made, the way that he takes questions, he very much controls a conversation. And James, feel free to jump in here if not. But he's really good at that. He's really good at, to the point of like cutting people off, which I think.

Starting point is 00:22:49 think it's rude, but whatever, to make sure he gets his point out. But last year at the combine, it's possible, and maybe this is coping for the way the kids talk about these things. It's possible he's talking to the front office last year, right? I don't want to pay more for the same team. Yeah. And we've said many times, like, do we think that Duke wanted to let Jesse Bates walk? No.

Starting point is 00:23:16 And that's been a saying that we've, or a question that we've asked rhetorically on this show for a while. Now, it'll be interesting to hear what Duke has to say. Is he up there controlling the narrative, making excuses, talking about how does he talk about it? Or is it kind of more like last year at the combine where it was like,

Starting point is 00:23:37 yeah, we don't want to pay more for the same team. We recognize that we're not good enough. We recognize that we've made some mistakes here, we're running guys back too long. And then they just kind of did that again. Yeah. And then there's a question of like, well, what does it matter what Duke says?

Starting point is 00:23:50 And that's its own whole topic. But always interesting to hear what Duke says and try to ascertain who he's talking to exactly when he speaks. I agree with that. And I think it's a really good point because here's the element here. Maybe this is why Duke and Zach are back rhymed again. Because Duke's like, hey, I wanted to do more in free agency and you didn't listen to me. And so then I felt forced to address linebacker because Al Golden really wanted linebackers. And so we had to go that route because he felt like to run his defense.

Starting point is 00:24:17 Like, you never know, right? Like, what went into what? And I would be stunned if Zach Taylor and Duke Tobin were like, yeah, just signed T.J. Slaten and Orrin Burks, we're good. Like, bring back Samaj. Well, guess what? We get to ask Duke Toe. We, you get to ask Duke Tobin about those things on Friday now. And so that's now.

Starting point is 00:24:41 He's going to be very careful. He's not going to throw his employer under the boss. Of course. There's family. But correct. But if they expect to sit on their hands in free agency again, then it doesn't really matter what Duke says. It doesn't matter what Zach says.

Starting point is 00:25:00 It doesn't matter what anyone says because they're not going to be good enough. They just aren't. Unless Joe Burrow goes and becomes Captain America for real and gets in one of those chambers and has the powers, they won't be good enough. They need to go get a lot. And so obviously they'll be a lot. There'll be a ton of things. I still am processing the fact that Duke is going to talk.

Starting point is 00:25:22 And obviously we have Zach today, which we will react to on a later show if he says anything super noteworthy. We hear from Zach enough to where I'm not anticipating anything crazy, but maybe there will be. Regardless, we will be able to react to it. That's the beauty of the off season. There's going to be time every day. We don't go anywhere, Jake. We're right here. Someone asked me today like, oh, you take a time off?

Starting point is 00:25:44 I was like, from what? time off from what we we're rolling baby we're rolling here yeah the time off is when the NFL is on vacation that's the only time that we take any days off and that's not even really much time off we're still with you uh this is not that time because in today's episode we didn't get to talk about Dalton risner doubling down on a pretty eloquent locker side statement about his desire to be back in Cincinnati that I thought was well delivered that's something we're going to have to get to DJ Turner telling Joe Enaman, Fox 19, that he is going to ask his agent to start extension talks with the Bengals.

Starting point is 00:26:21 That's going to be its own whole topic and a variety of other Bengals-free agents and the things we're going to be asking the Bengals front office to do that I alluded to, the to-do list, the checklist for this Bengals front office this off-season. But it will be interesting to hear from Duke Tobin at this juncture in the off-season. And then again at the Combine and not a whole lot changes between now and the Combine. we shouldn't necessarily expect to see a lot. There was a window at the end of the year where the Bengals could have approached

Starting point is 00:26:55 Dalton Reisner, DJ Turner for extensions. Well, maybe not DJ Turner. They had to wait until the... Not DJ Turner. Yeah, they couldn't have done it with DJ. But with Dax, they could have started extension talks. The upside to that, in case you're curious, is that then you can spread out the cap hit,

Starting point is 00:27:13 which, look, I know. No, the Bengals don't care about this kind of thing. But you can bring some of that cap hit into this current year and offset some of the later cap hit. Whatever, the Bengals don't do that. They don't care. Okay, fine. But typically, you don't see a whole lot of moves happening between now and the combine.

Starting point is 00:27:32 So at this point, talking to Duke versus the combine talking to Duke, perhaps as an opportunity to get a retrospective as opposed to a prospective look on where things went wrong last offseason, what the lessons are from last off season and the way they saw this season play out. And obviously they have a lot to do this upcoming off season, but maybe that's more of the combine conversation. I'm sure it'll come up on Friday.

Starting point is 00:28:01 It's impossible for it not to, but I'm just thinking of like the upside of getting an additional chance to talk to Duke here and what that could look that could be. Yeah, well, it's, hopefully we get him three times. Hopefully we get him for this week. Hopefully we get him Combine.

Starting point is 00:28:20 Hopefully we get him before the draft. Typically, he does a pre-draft. Yeah. Yeah. And so hopefully that's the case because then you're getting him, Combine really close to free agency. Now really goes to the season, draft really close to the draft post-free agency.

Starting point is 00:28:37 And so you can really gauge, all right, this is their vision, this is how they're building the team, because he will give you nugget. You have to look closely, but he will give you nuggets. Hey, Duke, how do you view safeties? Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. They take Daxil.

Starting point is 00:28:49 He was really, really high on their board. Top 11 on their board. That's a couple of years ago. Two years ago at the combine. That was to me. It was hilarious. Giggle, giggle, joke, joke. Then two years ago, he was like, yeah, you might go with a veteran and draft a guy at offensive tackle.

Starting point is 00:29:07 What did they do? They signed Trent Brown and they drafted a Marius Mims. So there will be truth. sprinkled throughout. We just got to find it. And we will. Looking forward to that. If Zach has some wild things to say, like James said, that that's probably our next episode, depending on what Zach says. We also plan to do film that was going to be today. That will now be tomorrow or maybe the next day it'll fit in somewhere this week.

Starting point is 00:29:32 We do have one more game of Bengals film to talk about, including Amarious Mins, finishing the season on a strong note. I'm very excited for Marius Mons. future. Like that's going to be another player here. That's a player that the Bengals got absolutely right. Love the pick at the time. Like the process there to go Amarius Mims. And the future for him is very well on his way to talk about extend that guy as soon as possible. Based on the way he finished this season. So we will we will be talking about some of the final film

Starting point is 00:30:07 takeaways this week. We'll be talking about Duke Tobin's presser. That might bleed into next week. We'll see how the timing works out there. Some offseason to do, some of the final takeaways from some of the players that we heard from on Monday in the Bengals final open locker room of the season as well. So plenty to get to this week. And it's ramping up for the off season. I took my first look at free agent names, James. Late last night, I was looking at free agent names, Devin Lloyd, Jalen, Hawkins, Brian Cook, Cam Curl. Don't be naming on.

Starting point is 00:30:38 What are you doing? What are you doing? That's all I'm saying. I'm just naming names. They're just names. All of them. We're going to talk a lot more in a greater degree of depth about free agent targets. And, of course, the available names will change significantly between now and the start of free agency, too.

Starting point is 00:30:54 But that'll do it for this episode of the Lockdown Bengals podcast. Until next time, thanks for listening. Hoaday and have a good one.

Locked On Bengals - Daily Podcast On The Cincinnati Bengals - RUNNING IT BACK: Bengals Owner Mike Brown Throws Support Behind Zac Taylor and Duke Tobin

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