Kole Taylor has reinvented the tight end position
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MORGANTOWN -- Over the past two football seasons there have been a number of West Virginia players who have grabbed more headlines than tight end Kole Taylor but no one has caught passes like him as he reinvented the position in the Mountaineers' offense.
In many ways it was fitting that his abbreviated career in Morgantown was out of the ordinary, for he and the path he has taken through college football to get to this Saturday's game against Central Florida, his Senior Day, was extraordinary, to say the least.
To begin with, he played before two of the wildest, most dedicated fans the college game has to offer, beginning his career at LSU before transferring to WVU.
"My path is interesting, but it seems nowadays everyone has a similar path to me, starting at one school and ending up at another one," he said. "You have big dreams and you want to play big time football coming into college. That's kind of what I've been doing. Looking back on the young kid who wanted to play big time football, I'm really proud of that."
He was different physically, for at 6-foot-7 he looked more like a basketball player than a football receiver, yet he played even bigger than his height.
A year ago, in an offense that had previously all but ignored the tight end position, he was the team's leading receiver with 35 passes for 444 yards, 12.1 yards per catch, with four TDs, then followed up on that with a season that shows him with the same 35 catches for 388 yards, 11.1 yards per catch, and 3 TDs with still two or three games left to play.
But it wasn't so much what he did but how he did it, and it's always been that way.
When he came to WVU from Baton Rouge, he had video evidence of what kind of player he was playing over and over on YouTube, the result of a classic highlight from his freshman year when the Bayou Tigers, then 3-5, upset the No. 6 Gators, who were 8-1, on a last-second field goal on a play by him that remains a popular video.
In a dense fog and with the game tied with less than a minute to play, Taylor caught a short pass, struggled to get to the first down marker and barely made it.
In the process, the shoe had been ripped off his foot by a tackler, who became so irate that he flung the shoe downfield following the play.
That resulted in a flag and the official standing there and making the announcement that echoes through the memory "Unsportsmanlike conduct, No. 11, throwing the other player's shoe 20 yards downfield."
It was such an odd play that no one noticed until the replay that the foul was not on No. 11, but No. 3, Marco Wilson.
That play put LSU in range for the winning field goal.
At WVU, Taylor became a favorite target of quarterback Garrett Greene and a fan favorite for his often successful hurdles over potential tacklers.
The truth is, going back to all those who made headlines, it's highly likely that Taylor is a potential higher NFL draft pick than many of them due to his size, ability and the improvement he has shown in such aspects of the game as blocking and route running.
"There's always stuff to improve on. I've done a decent job in the pass game, better than last year. I did a decent job on the perimeter. I improved on last year and that's what you strive for. There's always improvement in the run game that can be had," he said.
His goal coming into the season was to make such improvements.
"I'm just doing everything I can do to be a better teammate, better player every week. I just want to be the best player on Saturday that I can be. I have improved on last year a lot. Perimeter blocking has been a big point for our team and I've improved on that a good bit. Just in the last game, route fundamentals are something I've improved on. I try to be the best teammate I can be, the best player on Saturday that I can be. I'm hardest on myself and know there's always room for improvement."
Taylor admits that the results from the season are disappointing, but he refuses to term it a failure and heads into his final collegiate games thinking it can be salvaged.
"We could have definitely been more consistent. Consistency is something you need within an offense. We didn't do that as well as we could have, but we have two more games -- hopefully three -- and we want to go out there and prove ourselves," he said.
"Getting to a bowl game is definitely something we look forward to and something we want to do. We have two chances to win one game to get another bowl game. That's something we want to earn around here. Every one of us seniors want to play another game, put on the West Virginia uniform one more time."