The Bengals and Browns seem determined to disappoint fans, extending those efforts in completely opposite ways Monday.

From Cleveland, we got the announcement Kevin Stefanski was fired after six years as the head coach. This season, he won five games with a two-win team.

Meanwhile, they’re gonna run it back in Cincinnati with Zac Taylor, who won six games with a 10-win team.

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Full disclosure: I am no Browns expert. I don’t watch all their games closely so maybe I’m completely wrong here, though I’ve seen other people who know what they’re talking about make reference to things that seem true.

I know fans complain about Stefanski’s play-calling at times, but all fans complain about their play-callers, justifiably or not.

Maybe it was time for a change of voices, a reason teams use to make a change when it’s not obviously justified, but he seems to have been dealt a very bad hand.

The Browns gave him the worst set of skill players in the league and rookies who are very unlikely to be long-term starters in the NFL took most their snaps at quarterback.

They still outplayed the Bengals twice though got only one win out of it because kickers are still unpredictable at least once in a while.

If you are a Browns fan who just wanted to see something different, I am not going to dismiss that point of view. I’m sure it has some justification.

From down south, it looks like knows what he’s doing while those above him do not, so his replacement will be racing uphill.

As near as I can tell, Stefanski and Taylor are near mirror opposites.

Stefanski was actually a good offensive coordinator before getting his job.

He spent more than a decade with the Minnesota Vikings, including overseeing the league’s No. 8 scoring offense his last year there.

The football side of things he usually seems to have on lock. He obviously knows what he’s doing as far as scheming even when he has poor personnel, which is often.

It does seem the locker room management could have been better, though I got a lot of Marvin Lewis Era vibes from the Browns over the last few years as the organization made it clear they don’t care about character at all as long as they think a player can help them win. (The exception of course being bad character is a positive if it means they can get them on the cheap, another classic early 2000s Bengals play.)

Taylor is completely lost from a football standpoint. He had little experience overall, and the results in his previous stops mostly weren’t impressive. They occasionally stumble into a good game plan, but most of the Bengals’ success is from overwhelming talent at quarterback and receiver.

He does have a strong reputation as a locker room manager. Whether that is true is hard to confirm, but I will give him the benefit of the doubt.

“They don’t quit on him” is one of the few positive things anyone can ever seem to come up with, which isn’t saying much. Usually that is a giveaway he’s not doing anything else well.

Going out with a Battle of Ohio win would have been pretty nice, eh? Alas, it was not meant to be…

I never root for losses, but I also knew it would have been futile in this case because Taylor wasn’t going to be fired even if something humiliating happened Sunday.

Taylor could have had the courtesy then to prevent the Bengals from being humiliating, but obviously that is out of his control.

Instead, a loser team found another way to lose: Two defensive touchdowns allowed before the usual defensive disappearing act against the worst offense in the league.

The front office gets some blame for the roster Taylor is working with.

(You knew that, but I didn’t want it left unsaid.)

Obviously the moves they have made to rebuild a 2021-22 defense that got by mostly on forcing timely turnovers in the red zone has gone very poorly. I think there is some chicken-or-the-egg? at work here, though, as the same acting GM (Duke Tobin) drafted the rosters Marvin Lewis and his professional staff molded into playoff teams without the benefit of Joe Burrow playing quarterback.

Maybe the Bengals are just due for some better end-of-game luck next season, though aside from Burrow they’ve had good injury luck for five years.

The good news is the offense is set so they can put all their energy into improving the defense. They managed to rebuild that unit through two years of free agency the last time around, so there is hope they could add four or five impact players and be much better next season.

Hope is not a plan, but I guess that’s all Bengals fans have for now.

(Read on for an Ohio State update, but first comes our second ad of this newsletter. Please keep in mind clicking the ads gives me some compensation and costs you nothing!)

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As for Ohio State, I’m inclined to let some of the dust settle on transfer portal season before trying to make some sense of it, but a lot has already happened.

More than a dozen Buckeyes have entered the portal, including starting right guard Tegra Tshabola and a handful of young players who still likely would have become starters at Ohio State but don’t see fit to hang around and be sure when potentially bigger paydays await elsewhere now.

That group includes Springfield High School standout Aaron Scott Jr., fellow CB prospect Bryce West of Cleveland Glenville and five-star receiver prospect Mylan Graham of Indiana.

C.J. Hicks, a five-star prospect from Alter High School who moved to defensive end from linebacker this season and ended up redshirting, is also in the portal.

Such is the reality of college football now, like it or (more likely) not.

Monday Musings: The College Football Playoff is too big, and the Bengals are too late

Ohio State has also added a pair of transfers (including another tight end fro Ohio University) and will certainly add several more, including in all likelihood multiple starters and others expected to be major parts of the 2026 team.

My friends Tom Orr and Tony Gerdeman from BuckeyeHuddle.com discuss that and more on their latest podcast, so I figured it was worth sharing here if you’re interested.

You can also find a full list of transfers here from Bucknuts.com.

Beyond that, we are still waiting for announcements from 8-10 juniors with NFL decisions. That includes sure-things like Caleb Downs and Carnell Tate and very unlikelies like any of the offensive linemen, but you never know.

This is another area that has changed notably in the NIL era as day two and three picks now have much more incentive to stay in school than they did when they weren’t able to make as much or more as an NFL rookie would.