After his best game yet, 5-star freshman Leonard Taylor is ‘in the rotation’ for Miami
It was a play Leonard Taylor made dozens and dozens of times a year when he was in high school, but it was the stage — in the fourth quarter of a two-point Atlantic Coast Conference game last Thursday on ESPN — that made it particularly revealing.
The Virginia Cavaliers had a second-and-4 at their own 45-yard line and were just a few first downs away from running out the clock. The Miami Hurricanes turned to Taylor, who just made his debut a week earlier, to plug up the middle of the field and he did what he has always done best. He tossed aside Virginia’s left guard, leaving him stumbling forward to block nobody while Taylor dropped Wayne Taulapapa.
“He had a big tackle on that last drive in the fourth quarter,” coach Manny Diaz told WQAM’s “The Joe Rose Show with Zach Krantz” on Monday, “and he showed that he can make plays.”
If Miami hadn’t lost 30-28 on a missed field goal as time expired, Taylor’s tackle for loss would have gone down as one of the biggest plays in the victory. The Cavaliers punted two plays later and the Hurricanes (2-3, 0-1 ACC) drove into field-goal range in the final 5:36.
Taylor’s first playing time came only a week earlier against the FCS Central Connecticut State Blue Devils. By the waning moments of his second ever college football game, the freshman became one of the players Diaz trusted most.
Taylor, who was a five-star recruit and the No. 4 defensive lineman in the 247Sports.com composite for the Class of 2021, played a career-high 21 snaps and finished with two tackles, 1 1/2 tackles for loss and a half sack in his first game against FBS competition. He was forced into a larger role last week, effectively the third defensive tackle, because fellow defensive linemen Jared Harrison-Hunte and Jordan Miller were both out, and he made the most of it.
Coaches repeatedly said Taylor was “close” to getting on the field throughout training camp and the early part of the season. Now he’s going to be a fixture on game days, Diaz said.
“He’s in the mix. He’s in the rotation,” Diaz said. “You see him flash, which is what he can do. He can make plays. Like all of our guys, the consistency will be the key, but it’s exciting to see the young guy get in there.”
Taylor wasn’t with the team for spring practice and he joined arguably the deepest position group on the team, so Miami didn’t rush him for most of his first month. The Hurricanes knew he could make individual spectacular plays — defensive line coach Jess Simpson said last month Taylor typically won his 1-on-1 reps — but they wanted to make sure he had a full grasp of all his assignments.
“Good football starts with knowing what’s probably about to happen,” Simpson said in September. “Good players don’t magically make plays. They’ve got a great idea of what’s about to happen,”
While he hasn’t spoken to reporters yet this season, Taylor does contribute a weekly blog at Rivals.com. Sitting on the bench for the first three weeks, he said, “was difficult,” but he understood the decision.
“It’s because I’m still learning. It is only like 50 percent of the plays that I’m really very comfortable with right now,” he said last week. “I understand why I wasn’t playing. Coach did throw a lot of plays at me. I did have to sit there and look at them, and listen how to adjust to the alignment and play my position, so it was understandable.”
