This morning, a young man named Davion Taylor joined the Morning Show to discuss becoming a Philadelphia Eagles LB & his background with football has been much different than mosts.
Davion Taylor has a unique football background. So unique in fact that he only played 1 and a half games of it in high school. He was a stand out track star who never played football because his mother’s religion forbade it (Read more about that here: https://bleacherreport.com/articles/2797362-denied-high-school-football-davion-taylor-found-an-improbable-path-to-colorado). He played one full high school game before trying to carry the career into junior college team & was almost cut before a scout from University of Colorado saw enough to offer him the chance to come to Boulder Colorado and play football. He’s constantly amazed at his own trajectory to the pros & he talked about it with Marc Farzetta & Bob Cooney about it today.
A man that played 1 game of high school football just became a 3rd round NFL draft pick. A pretty incredible story. When the speed & size are both there a lot of coaches will believe they can make it work & Davion got that chance at the University of Colorado. A mere 24 college games later & the Eagles saw enough to select him in the 3rd round. Davion will most likely have a higher learning curve ahead of him than most given his background but maybe his athleticism & speed alone can flatten that curve down.
When asked by Marc Farzetta what LB in the league he grew up watching or styling his game after, Davion had an interesting answer.
Not only did he not play until nearly the college level, turns out he didn’t even start watching the game until the college level.
Davion has never been to Philadelphia before but he’s been reading up on it’s culture & well, it’s cheesesteak culture & he’s extremely excited to try one when he gets here. In fact the furthest North he claims to have been is only Tennessee.
In addition to the normal learning curve that all rookies have, this years class has it even tougher because of COVID-19 & the team facilities being shut down. Normally the guys would already be in town & going through rookie camps & OTA’s at the Novacare complex & even getting the chance to know their new homes & surroundings first. Now, all the players are at home & doing meetings like the rest of us, digitally.
Throw that on top of everything else on a rookies plate & we all hope he can handle the curve because linebacker has been a position of need for this team.
You can check out the entire podcast here: