The Cincinnati Bengals were a disaster offensively during the Monday night loss to the Pittsburgh Steelers, which is putting it nicely.
But Zac Taylor never considered yanking Andy Dalton from the game.
He told the media the following after the loss:
“There wasn’t. Andy is our leader right now and he’s fighting. We wanted to get some momentum going. Yeah, the game might be out of hand, but we’ve got to generate some momentum going into the next week, so we left him in there.”
It’s an interesting comment because given how the game unfolded, there wasn’t any chance of gaining momentum toward next week.
In fact, benching Dalton would have been a means to protect him from the eight sacks he eventually suffered. He was bad — but he’s also the franchise passer and losing him would hurt even more than not establishing momentum. Dalton finished with 21 completions on 37 attempts for 171 yards and a pick.
But at the same time, pulling Dalton would have meant throwing Ryan Finely to the wolves, which isn’t fair to the rookie.
That’s one version of quarterback purgatory. Dalton made some benching-worthy decisions and throws but what Taylor didn’t say is simple — the poor play from the line made any quarterback decision a moot point.
