FMIA: On Jeopardy, Joe Burrow and Super Bowl 56—Predawn Drive Into Work With Bengals Coach Zac Taylor

The Super Bowl week FMIA dawns in predawn Cincinnati, however. It’s dead silent in Cincinnati coach Zac Taylor’s neighborhood. Bengals-Rams, the Super Bowl LVI match no one on earth saw coming on Labor Day, is the next game, but glitzy L.A. and the game seem very far away.

CINCINNATI — Dark. Nearly pitch black. At 5:20 a.m., last Tuesday, I inched my rental car onto Bengals coach Zac Taylor’s street on the east side of town, and a deer stood in the middle of his street. The deer wouldn’t move. Must be a city deer. I drove maybe 3 mph around it, till I was clear. It still hadn’t moved as I parked, then walked the last 40 yards to Taylor’s driveway. Two rabbits sprinted out of the last yard next to his house as I walked by.

Not the normal feel of a place 13 minutes from an NFL stadium.

“This used to be a forest,” the Cincinnati coach said as he pulled his White Tahoe out of the silent development, “so we get our share of wildlife here.”

Now the wildlife is the shocked Cincinnati populace. Wouldn’t you be shocked if your team, 4-11-1 last year, was headed for the Super Bowl for the first time since Zac Taylor was 5? Wouldn’t you be shocked if phenom QB and Bengals historian Joe Burrow (more about that soon), in the span of eight days, sent home top-seeded Tennessee and heavy favorite two-seed Kansas City, less than four years after Burrow was sent into out-of-state exile by Ohio State coach Urban Meyer?

It’s all crazy. When I asked Burrow’s dad Jimmy, by text, if this season ever feels like a dream, he texted back, “Every day.”

Taylor understands why the world is shocked. He’s not. He seems … grateful. The first thing we talked about: the game balls he and some players were spreading on surprise visits throughout the