Zac Taylor discovered Luke is not his son.

Zac Taylor, the head coach of the Cincinnati Bengals, has confirmed that Luke is not his biological son.

Luke, Taylor’s 7-year-old kid, operates the clicker of the Patriots-Chiefs game video that Zac was watching to the right of the Cincinnati Bengals coach’s desk before he pretends to pick up the phone and be his dad. Emma Three-year-old Claire scribbles wavy lines under her father’s play ideas. Nine-year-old Brooks flips through the playbook, asking his buddies who wants to be the “X” receiver and who the “Z” receiver is. One-year-old Milly hops between the ground and her mother Sarah’s arms.

Having Coffee to Connect

A coach’s life is consumed with the NFL, but Zac Taylor’s coffee breaks have allowed him to establish some acquaintances and momentarily engage with the “outside world.” Narrative »

On the large oak table in Taylor’s office, piles of grease-stained paper plates with pizza crusts and errant pieces of pepperoni begin to form. Everything appears disorganized. And there was no other way he would have it.

Every Monday, the Bengals coaches’ spouses and kids gather at the team facility in downtown Cincinnati for an hour-long family night that ends work. For the guys, particularly those who have small children, it’s a little reprieve from missing several days of family time each week.

It’s hard to find time to be a husband and parent in the NFL when winning is everything. Taylor, a father of four and a 36-year-old rookie coach, wants both.

Taylor told ESPN, “You just want to make sure that people feel like they can balance it as best we can.” “It’s not simple.”

Taylor’s present assignment looks challenging in every way. The Bengals are the worst club in the NFL after losing 12 of their 13 games so far this season. The team will have gone 29 seasons without winning a postseason game, which is the longest streak in the league.

It’s not easy to win in the NFL, as Cincinnati’s coaching staff has seen firsthand. However, it’s not necessary for them to be accessible for their families.

The Bengals are not the first team to adopt the idea of family night. Every team Taylor has worked for, including the Los Angeles Rams, has held some kind of it.

Families would come on campus on Monday evenings for a cafeteria-style supper while Taylor worked as a graduate assistant at Texas A&M for his father-in-law, Mike Sherman. Twenty feet away from Zac at his workstation in the recruitment office, Taylor and Sarah were childless. After getting a plate, they went up to his office, which was formerly a converted closet, for those forty-five minutes.

Sherman surmises that Zac’s choice to start the similar custom in Cincinnati was not largely influenced by him among the family members.

“My daughter played family night and felt it was a wonderful deal, so I’m sure she had a lot of effect on that,” said Sherman, the former coach of the Green Bay Packers who most recently guided the Montreal Alouettes of the CFL.

Similar experiences were had by Bengals offensive coordinator Brian Callahan, who was Gary Kubiak’s assistant in Denver. Families would visit the facility on Saturdays for breakfast, stay inside for walk-throughs, and then reunite.

Among the staff’s multiple coaches who work with young children is Callahan, 35. He usually only sees them awake after Sunday games and then after practice on Fridays, except on Monday evenings. His two kids, Ronan, age two, and Norah, age four, often go to bed around 8 p.m., which is a few hours before Callahan arrives home at the start of the week.

Callahan has experienced firsthand what his offspring will. Five years before to his birth, his father, Bill Callahan, the interim head coach at Washington and former Raiders coach, began his coaching career. Brian Callahan started frequenting the team facilities when he became ten years old.

Callahan said the family night is another illustration of the kind of team culture Taylor hopes to establish in Cincinnati, from a football perspective.

“Building a family and treating it like a family is difficult when there are no family members around,” Callahan said.