Zac Taylor brings Bengals' early season woes to Chiefs in Week 2

Zac Taylor is used to losing his first game of the year. He's just not accustomed to losing that pitifully as the Cincinnati Bengals did in Week 1.

Coming into this season, the Bengals were hoping to get off on the right foot for once in the Zac Taylor era. With a cupcake opponent (the New England Patriots as the easiest on-paper game on the team's schedule) lined up, a steady contender like Cincy should have held the edge despite the absence of wide receiver Tee Higgins and the adjustments every team makes in Week 1.

Instead, the Bengals might have turned in one of their worst performances since Taylor's first campaign with the team in 2019 (a two-win season) and one of the worst starts of Joe Burrow's career with an embarrassing 16-10 loss to Jacoby Brissett's Patriots. For his part, Burrow looked timid and limited, while the defense missed numerous tackles and allowed the Pats to have their way in the trenches.

The Bengals are perhaps the slowest starters in the NFL these days.

The 0-1 start now means that Taylor has lost every single season-opening game of his career but one with the Bengals, now entering his sixth season. What's more disheartening is that the Bengals have never won in Week 2 under Taylor. The lone victory in the first two weeks of the season for Taylor's Bengals came in an overtime victory over the Minnesota Vikings to kickstart the 2021 season.

If you do the math, that's a 1-10 record overall for Taylor as a head coach in the first two weeks of the season, which means that his team is used to putting themselves in a hole. To Cincinnati's credit, they have found a way to consistently climb out of such situations year by year, and they're typically playing great football down the stretch.

Still, how much more successful could the Bengals be if they weren't looking up in the standings to start each season? Why does it take so long to learn some lessons or make some adjustments? And what are fans to make of this particular loss to a team projected to be among those picking first overall in next season's draft?

The Bengals need to figure something out quicky because they're visiting one of the most difficult places to play in the NFL in Week 2 when they venture to Arrowhead for a matchup with the Kansas City Chiefs. It's possible that Hollywood Brown might be back for a Chiefs offense that already looks invigorated by the additions of Xavier Worthy, Kingsley Suamataia, Samaje Perine, and JuJu Smith-Schuster.

If they can't, Taylor is a safe bet to fall to 1-11 overall in the season's first two weeks in his career as a head coach.