Cincinnati Bengals head coach Zac Taylor is officially the last man standing in the AFC North. 

With the shocking news coming out of Pittsburgh, Taylor is the only currently employed coach in the AFC North and one of the outright longest-tenured coaches in the NFL 

Elsewhere in the AFC North: 

• The Cleveland Browns fired Kevin Stefanski
• The Baltimore Ravens fired John Harbaugh
• The Pittsburgh Steelers got a resignation from Mike Tomlin

To say the very least, there are some good and negative points about all this from a Bengals perspective. Let’s take a look. 

The Good

Continuity matters. Those who argue against it can’t turn around and argue the team needs to re-sign Dalton Risner because the offensive line needs to keep rolling. It matters. 

Look at last year. The Bengals decided to bring on a new defensive coordinator. It would appear that his needs were never properly conveyed to the scouting department, or the coaching staff and scouting department weren’t in lockstep. Things were historically bad and outright ruined the season. 

Retaining Taylor and most of his staff means fixing whatever went wrong in the process last year and getting a core group of players back already familiar with the staff. 

Other teams just had massive turnarounds in Year 1 with new head coaches, yes. But there’s momentum behind the idea that the Bengals will have a leg up on the AFC North that features three teams starting over, with only one of them (Baltimore) rostering a franchise quarterback. 

RELATED: Duke Tobin’s anticipated Bengals address underwhelms

The Bad

It’s just plain ugly. John Harbaugh won a Super Bowl and dominated the AFC North with six divisional crowns, two No. 1 seeds and four appearances in the AFC title game. The Ravens had three losing seasons under him. 

Tomlin won a Super Bowl in Pittsburgh and had 19 seasons at .500 or better, second only to Tom Landry and tied with Bill Belichick. 

Taylor, by comparison, has gone to the playoffs twice in seven years. The highs were AFC title games, but the lows make onlookers wonder about wasting Joe Burrow’s prime. He’s got a 57-65-1 record and things fall apart without Burrow, plus the recurring issues of in-game management, issues juggling the offense and defense, etc.

Plus, resets could be good for the other franchises. If the front office and coaching staff still struggle to get on the same page while the other teams make progress, it puts the Bengals even more behind in the division. 

The Ugly

The perception of the Bengals just doing the same old thing is rough, especially after the Duke Tobin presser confirmed as much. 

Even uglier, though, is how messy things get if the Bengals don’t win the AFC North next year. They should have an advantage with Taylor back and continuity across the program.

If the Bengals don’t take the division, excuses like “new coaches put new things on film we weren’t expecting” will be brutal before wondering if Taylor gets to work the final year of his contract in 2027.

RELATED: Bengals players slated to become free agents

This article originally appeared on Bengals Wire: Good, bad and ugly of Zac Taylor being last AFC North coach standing