Instead, his Week 1 performance looked a lot like the ones that got him benched twice last year before injuries to Dax Hill and DJ Turner thrust him back into a starting role.
Defensive coordinator Al Golden said Taylor-Britt was one of the first people to approach him Monday morning, taking responsibility for his poor performance in the team’s opening win at Cleveland and insisting he would correct those mistakes in Week 2.
Coming off his worst season last year, Taylor-Britt can’t afford to let a slow start individually turn into multiple games, but Golden is giving him the benefit of a doubt for now. He’ll need Taylor-Britt and the secondary at their best Sunday when Travis Hunter and the Jacksonville Jaguars come to Paycor Stadium.
“He said, ‘I’ve got to do a couple things better, and I got you this week,’ and that kind of thing,” Golden said. “And so his self-awareness is good. Cam, you can coach him hard. And there’s a couple things that I think he wishes he had back. So I’m not sharing with you anything that he hasn’t already said or believes. But first games are like that. First games are tough when you’re seeing looks that you didn’t prepare for.”
Credit: AP
Credit: AP
According to ProFootballFocus.com, Taylor-Britt allowed six catches on seven targets (85.7 percent) for 76 yards and a touchdown, and he had one missed tackle. He finished with just a 35.6 PFF defensive grade.
Last year was his worst season with an overall grade of 63.6, but improvement over the final six games made those final numbers look much better than they were over the first 11 games. He gave up receptions on 65.1 percent of targets in 2024 and recorded nine missed tackles according to PFF.
Sunday’s performance was similar to his two worst games last year.
“I know what I’m capable of, and yeah, I was happy about the win, and it could be better on both sides of the ball, but myself individually, I know I can do a lot better as well,” Taylor-Britt said.
Taylor-Britt said he wished he had owned up to his mistakes sooner last year, so bad plays didn’t carry over into next snaps and snowball into a long stretch of poor performances. He said every week the struggles kept weighing him down, and he “didn’t know how to put it away.”
That’s why it was important to say something right away to Golden.
“It’s the start of the season,” Taylor-Britt said. “It’s Week 1. You want to knock it out now. We can’t redo this (expletive) again. It’s not that.”
“Quick get over it right now,” he added when asked how to shake off a slow start. “At corner, if you don’t, it’s a touchdown next, so you have to get over it and not dwell on things. I think I did that a lot last year. But it’s not last year, and I plan to be better.”
Taylor-Britt said he can’t worry about last year anymore. It’s in the past, and this is a new year with new expectations.
This is an important season for him, being in the final year of his rookie contract. The second-round draft pick’s future with the organization depends on his ability to bounce back and prove he’s still the same player who showed so much promise in his first two seasons.
Bengals coach Zac Taylor said Taylor-Britt showed enough in training camp to believe he was still capable of being a productive corner for the defense. Now he just has to prove it in real games.
“Now it’s just you got to prove it,” Taylor said. “You got to prove that it’s going to be consistent during the season. But I thought Cam had a good training camp, and we got a lot of confidence in him. Some of the players were not (at their best); not his best plays in the game the other day. And so again, I see better than I hear, so just show us that you’re going to improve on that. And I trust that he will.”
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