Bengals coach Zac Taylor rips refs over Myles Garrett's record-setting sack

In the Cleveland Browns' final regular season game of the 2025/26 NFL season, defensive end Myles Garrett achieved an NFL record, the most sacks in a single season.

Michael Strahan passed up Mark Gastineau, Jared Allen, and Justin Houston with 22.5 sacks in the 2001 season. TJ Watt of the Pittsburgh Steelers tied that 22.5 mark in 2021, but Garrett now remains alone at the top with a full 23.0 sacks on the year.

It is an unbelievable record, one that may never be broken in NFL history.

Bengals head coach Zac Taylor did not seem to appreciate the recognition that Garrett received from the officials, though. After the record-setting sack, the officials stopped the game for a short moment to appreciate the moment in history, with the entire stadium giving Garrett a round of applause.

Taylor did not share the same sentiment, though, as he was irate in his post-game presser about the way the officials handled it.

“There's 5 minutes left in our season, we're playing for our lives here and I was never told we’re going to stop the game, and in a critical moment like that, the refs said they made a decision to stop the game.”

The Bengals were eliminated from the playoffs before this game; in fact they were eliminated after their Week 15 loss to the Baltimore Ravens on December 15th. So one might wonder what Taylor is referring to when he says the team is playing for their lives.

If the Bengals had needed to win the game for a playoff spot, there may be more people agreeing with Taylor’s reasoning, but the problem is that they weren’t.

“We didn’t sub, we were trying to be on the ball and go and play with tempo, and the umpire just held the ball so that we couldn’t do anything. I’m yelling at Joe (Burrow) to get on the ball, and you couldn’t play,” Taylor went on.

For this to be the hill that Taylor is living to die on just feels very tone deaf. If a player has a chance to make NFL history, to do something that has never been done before in a season, you would think there would be no appreciation?

Taylor finished by saying that the officials never informed him that if the record occurred that they would stop the game.

A very interesting sentiment from a head coach on the hot seat who now has a losing record versus Cleveland.