Cincinnati Bearcats Star Offensive Lineman Taran Tyo Speaks On UC's 2025 End Of Season Slump

Everyone is pushing into the 2026 Cincinnati Football season, with an elephant in the room.

Last season, the Bearcats started 7-1, but five straight losses ended the year at 7-6. In those five losses, UC only kept one within one possession and was outscored 88-181 during that stretch.

This, of course, then helped set up 23 players leaving the program via the NCAA Transfer Portal, causing a mass reshuffling that is still getting configured with week one firmly under two months away.

It is almost impossible to shake off the feeling of being ranked as high as No. 17 in the nation and feeling on top of the world just to crumble so quickly, but during Big 12 Media Days, center Taran Tyo spoke on how he and the team are hoping to fix the problem.

“I think, the big thing is not putting pressure on ourselves; start fast, finish strong. That was one of our of our team goals last year,” started Tyo.

“This year, we've kind of switched to a weekly process, and the Bearcat Council, our leadership council. We came up with a couple of team goals and things to achieve, for those team goals, because I think that if goals aren’t achievable, then why are they goals in the first place?”

That height of 17th in the country last season was the highest Cincinnati had been ranked since Luke Fickell’s penultimate year with the program when the Desmond Ridder-led squad made it all the way to the College Football Playoff while in the American Athletic Conference.

“If it's just something you say, if it's like, ‘Oh, we want to go to Dallas and go to a Big 12 Championship,’ well, how are you gonna achieve that? There's no process to it…We came up with a rather extensive set of goals that aren't just, you know, bullet points. There are bullet points, and then a whole list of things that go into that,” finished the redshirt senior.

The team is going to need everything pulling in the right direction next season, as it would be hard to find a more difficult Big 12 schedule than the Bearcats’ next season, as they are set to face Texas Tech, BYU and Utah. The three teams who are most commonly linked with Big 12 title talks heading into next season.

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