He has come a long way(Zac Taylor) Tor Sun Article

[JMF2006]

HE’S COME A LONG WAY

Zac Taylor has gone from backup QB in Winnipeg to Super Bowl coach in Cincinnati

Toronto Sun

4 Feb 2022

STEVE SIMMONS ssimmons@postmedia.com @simmonssteve

POSTMEDIA FILES

Now coach of the Cincinnati Bengals, Zac Taylor was the fourth-string quarterback of the Winnipeg Blue Bombers in 2007, but didn’t see any game action.

They used to go to Earl’s together most nights — “where else was there to go in Winnipeg?” — and talk about their futures in football, where they thought they were heading and what they wanted to do in the future.

The three backup quarterbacks from the 2007 Winnipeg Blue Bombers. Their lives are forever intertwined.

Ryan Dinwiddie was 27 years old back then, No. 2 on the Winnipeg depth chart behind starter Kevin Glenn. Dinwiddie is now the head coach of the Toronto Argonauts.

Kliff Kingsbury was No. 3 on that team behind Glenn and Dinwiddie. He was 28 years old and in his final days as a football player. He’s now the head coach of Kyler Murray and the Arizona Cardinals.

The fourth-string quarterback that year in Winnipeg, Zac Taylor, is heading to the Super Bowl. He was 24 when he was running scout team and carrying a clipboard for the Bombers. He’s now the head coach of the Cincinnati Bengals, heading with his surprising team next week to Los Angeles for Super Bowl LVI.

The three dressed for only one game together — the 2007 Grey Cup. The Bombers starting quarterback, Glenn, was injured in the Eastern final. That left Dinwiddie to make his first CFL start in a championship game. That was the only game Taylor dressed for in his brief professional playing career.

“Our goals back then were to play as long as we could,” Dinwiddie said. “I think you always think that way as a player — how long can I play? But I think we all realized who we were and what we were. We were pretty realistic about that.

“We all said if we couldn’t play anymore, we wanted to coach. And we’d sit there at Earl’s talking about coaching, maybe coaching together, what our philosophies were. We didn’t talk about where we’d be coaching or what level or anything like that. We just exchanged ideas. What we saw. What we wanted to do. Maybe where we saw ourselves going.”

They would draw plays on napkins. Every coach who ever lived has done that in some restaurant in some town somewhere. But what are the odds of this?

What are the odds that the three quarterbacks who played behind Glenn in Winnipeg, would all wind up as head coaches? Three guys who came out of different college programs, different environments, different offences, would each end up as head coaches at a relatively young age.

This is Taylor’s third season with the Bengals. The first year was a disaster with a rather disastrous roster. The second year there was some growth with the rookie quarterback, Joe Burrow. This is Year 3.

“I remember Zac sitting on the couch in my office and we’d be talking about the future. I’d ask: ‘What do you see yourself doing?’ You could tell then, he was going to be in football, doing something,” said Brendan Taman, then GM of the Bombers, who signed Dinwiddie and Taylor and traded with Montreal for Kingsbury.

“I think Zac could have played a little longer than he did, but he had an opportunity to get a pretty good spot at Texas A&M where his father-in-law (former Packers coach Mike Sherman) was coaching and he took it,” Dinwiddie said.

And he has been coaching ever since.

“When you’re a quarterback, you look at things in a different way, I think,” Dinwiddie said. “You’re looking at how everything works and how you have to relate to the whole team. And before you’re ever coaching, you’re already coaching. With the three of us, I think we all realized, we wanted to make it in football but we didn’t necessarily have the athleticism or the qualities you needed to make it big. Really our shot was to become coaches.”

Taylor was the cerebral one of the three, process-driven. He was down-home, small town, not much of an ego for a quarterback, no large presence. Just a solid football guy.

Kingsbury was the one with swagger, even as a backup: You always saw him

coming, even if he wasn’t playing.

Dinwiddie was somewhere in between: Not full of swagger. Not necessarily small town.

All of them full of football though. They knew they were going to be coaches.

They just didn’t know if it was going to be high school, college, or someplace else.

This was Kingsbury’s third year with the Cardinals. Like most of his years, it started great and ended poorly. This was Dinwiddie’s first year on the field, second year as head coach of the Argos. The team finished first then tapped out in the playoffs.

Not sure what it is about being a backup quarterback in the CFL, but it seems to be a road to coaching jobs. Just this week, the Buffalo Bills named former Argo Ken

Dorsey as their offensive co-ordinator. He wasn’t good enough to start in Toronto.

Former Argo coach Scott Milanovich was a backup in Calgary. He won a Grey Cup in Toronto as a coach and is now with the Indianapolis Colts.

Marcus Brady was mostly a CFL backup: He’s the offensive coordinator in Baltimore.

Sean Payton, the recently resigned head coach in New Orleans, was a CFL quarterback of little note, as was former Dallas head coach, Jason Garrett.

“When I had those guys in Winnipeg, I had no idea where they were going, what kind of coaches they were going to be,” Taman said. “I’d be lying if I said I saw this coming. But you tell there was something about those three — the way they got

along — the way they always talked football, that they had a certain mentality for the game.”

Dinwiddie thinks the Los Angeles Rams will win the Super Bowl, but he’s cheering for his old friend in Cincinnati. They haven’t been in touch in a while, although Dinwiddie texts with Kingsbury on occasion, he’s still comfortable in texting Taylor.

One more important connection to the Bengals is through their remarkable young quarterback Burrow. His dad, Jimmy, was a longtime defensive back in the CFL. Played in Montreal, Calgary and Ottawa. He went on to coach football, just never officially coached his son.