The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Next game ball on us, coach tells celebrating Bengals fans
When Zac Taylor walked unannounced into a packed bar in Cincinnati recently, some of the staff didn’t immediately recognize him, even though he leads the NFL team that plays its home games across the street.
“He was wearing Bengals gear, but there’s 500 other people in there wearing Bengals gear, so it wasn’t so obvious at the time,” Troy Tunney, general manager of the Blind Pig, said last week in a telephone interview. Tunney and others quickly “put two and two together,” though, when they noticed that this black-and-orange-bedecked patron was brandishing a commemorative football.
That’s when they happily realized the Bengals’ coach was in their midst — and was about to make them and their Paycor Stadium-adjacent establishment the latest participants in a new team tradition.
Starting last season, Taylor and his players began visiting bars in the area and handing out specially marked game balls following playoff wins. What started as an act of personal wish fulfillment for Taylor involving a neighborhood watering hole he drove past on his way to and from work has burgeoned to include two dozen bars, including some in far-flung pockets of Bengals fandom.
That number will soon grow if the team manages a second straight win over the host Kansas City Chiefs in tonight’s AFC championship game. As it is, Taylor’s team has won five playoff games already over the past two sea-sons, giving a major lift to a city that hadn’t had much to savor of late on the major sports stage.
That began to change in January 2022, when the Bengals followed a 10-7 regular season — after Taylor had gone a combined 6-25-1 in his first two years as coach — with a 26-19 playoff win over the Las Vegas Raiders. While gathered in the locker room to celebrate the end of the Bengals’ 31-year postseason victory drought, Taylor told his players, “Every playoff win from here on out, the city shares in this with us.”
That night, punter Kevin Huber, a Cincinnati native, joined Taylor in bringing a game ball to Mt. Lookout Tavern, named after a neighborhood on the city’s east side with which the coach has a particular familiarity.
Taylor told Sports Illustrated at the time that the joyous reception was “what I pictured” while driving by and taking note of the fans who would regularly gather inside.
“It was packed. It was a good scene,” he said then. “People obviously had been there for a while, having a good time, which is what I was hoping for. So it was fun to be able to share that with those people.”
Before sparking that fun, though, the then-38-year-old Taylor had his identification checked at the door. The detail of his coach getting carded was gleefully shared last year by former Bengals tight end C.J. Uzomah, who did his part by bringing a post-Raiders game ball to a tavern in nearby Fort Wright, Ky., while another bar in Cincinnati was similarly honored.
Those three game balls last year turned into four following the Bengals’ subsequent playoff win over the Tennessee Titans, then five more in the wake of the triumph at Kansas City that earned Cincinnati its first Super Bowl appearance in 33 years. This year, after each of the Bengals’ two playoff wins so far, over the Baltimore Ravens and the Buffalo Bills, six balls have been distributed. Three in each round have gone to local bars, including the Blind Pig, with the other three getting mailed to bars catering to Bengals fans in cities around the country.
“We’ve got fans across all states,” Taylor, an Oklahoma native, said at a recent news conference. “You want to find ways to be able to connect with them and show your appreciation for them, because I’ve been sent plenty of videos of bars across America with Bengals fans uniting and celebrating . ... So I think this will be a cool way to include them.”