Taylors won’t be sharing brotherly love in this city on Sunday
Before his team hosts the Cincinnati Bengals Sunday, Eagles quarterbacks coach Press Taylor will wish his big brother well and in his own way tell him how much he loves him.
Face coverings will hide their smiles in this, the age of the coronavirus pandemic. That and another week with zero fans in the seats are the signs of the times in most NFL cities.
The virus won’t take the fun out of the Taylor reunion, however, as Press will be facing his brother Zac, five years his senior and the head coach of the Bengals.
Press Taylor has been looking forward to this moment since last summer when he and 37-yearold Zac decided this game would be off topic during the family vacation.
“We typically talk two or three times a week,” Press Taylor said. “This week we have not really had a chance to connect. And I think that’s been on purpose. We always spend some time together in the summer but we kind of left football away just because we knew this was coming up early in the season. … It’s definitely a really cool experience.”
No one has to tell Press Taylor that Zac and the Bengals are 0-2 with rookie quarterback Joe Burrow, the top pick in the NFL draft. Or that the losses were by five or fewer points.
Zac Taylor has been focused on the Eagles the past nine days, the Bengals having last played Sept. 17. Zac is 2-16 in the Bengals’ rebuild, one full of turnovers and growing pains.
The Eagles are a more desperate 0-2 in that they were widely considered contenders for the NFC East pennant but played more like they were tanking for Trevor Lawrence in disturbing back to back losses to the Washington Football Team and the Los Angeles Rams.
The Eagles were outscored, 64-36, and committed six offensive turnovers in those games. They blew a 17-0 lead to Washington partly due to the fourth down recklessness of head coach Doug Pederson and incompetent decision-making by Carson Wentz, who has played like the worst quarterback in the division.
If Press Taylor knows exactly what’s bothering Wentz, he isn’t saying.
“We’re not going to throw a blanket over this whole thing and say this is what’s going on,” Taylor said. “We’re going to investigate everything. I’ll keep a lot of those close to the vest. There’s been this sense of urgency. There’s no panic within this organization, within this unit. It’s just a sense of urgency to get things right and to put our best foot forward every time we walk out there.”
The Bengals game comes at a good time for 32-year-old Press Taylor. Win or lose, after this contest he’ll be able to talk with his brother much more freely. That sure will beat holding everything inside.
The Taylors have a trust that goes far beyond the bond of NFL loyalty. Zac and Press made headlines at Norman High, then at Butler County Community College in Kansas, and later in college. Zac led Nebraska to the 2006 Big 12 championship game, earning offensive player of the year in the conference. Press was a backup quarterback at Marshall.
Zac Taylor married the daughter of Mike Sherman, who had a stint as head coach of the Green Bay Packers, and later found himself working for Sean McVay and the Rams after they selected Jared Goff with the first pick in the 2016 draft.
With the Eagles, Press Taylor worked his way into a job as quality control coach and into his current role dealing with Wentz,
the second pick in the 2016 draft.
“He was somebody I could lean on as I was going into the next stage of whatever he had just gone through, whether that was high school football, junior college football, college football, coaching in college, coaching in the pros,” Zac Taylor said. “I’ve always had somebody that I trusted more than anybody ahead of me doing these things so I could lean on him for his advice, ask his opinion.”
Their father, Sherwood Taylor, started at safety for Barry Switzer at Oklahoma and later coached there and at Kansas State. In non-pandemic times, this would have been a great weekend to get out of Norman and into one of those empty seats at Lincoln Financial Field.
Not a problem, as Sherwood will enter the result
of the game on the “Taylor Bro Bowl” trophy that lies in his office in Norman. Press leads, 2-1, in games they’ve faced each other in the NFL.
“That’s something that’s obviously a friendly competition,” Press Taylor said. “It will mean something more to us later down the line. But right now, it’s all about our teams. It’s about this game and putting our team in the best situation to go get a win.”
There was plenty of speculation that Zac Taylor, who succeeded Marvin Lewis as head coach of the Bengals, would bring Press in as his quarterbacks coach. The Eagles kept Press under contract.
Zac Taylor low-keyed the brotherly part of playing the Eagles by calling the game “business as usual.
“For Press and I, it’s just another game,” Zac Tay
lor said on a conference call. “Obviously, our families love just being able to tune in to one game. Usually they’re there in the stands and have fun with it. But for Press and I, it’s just business as usual. We both want to win. We both want the other guy to feel really bad after the game is over. But it’s always a proud moment for my family and my siblings and our wives.”
Said Zac Taylor, “There’s nobody I’d rather compete with more than my brother.
“It’s one of those things with your family,” he said. “You’re always rooting for him but if anybody beats him, I want it to be me.”
Win, lose or tie, for the Taylors, it’s a win-win.