The fortunate few talented enough to make that quantum leap from college football to the NFL weren’t necessarily the Big Men on Campus for four years.
Many didn’t start their freshman and sophomore seasons. But at least they practiced with the team.
And that brings us to Ike Taylor. He spent those years at the University of Louisiana-Lafayette working on his studies. So what happened to the kid who wandered onto the college playing field for the first time his junior year and didn’t start until the following season?
Well, he’s now the starting left cornerback for the Pittsburgh Steelers.
Taylor was a highly versatile two-way starter and placekicker at Abramson (La.) High School in the mid-to-late 1990s. He earned first-team all-district honors as a junior and senior, but wasn’t overwhelmed with major Division I scholarship offers. So he enrolled at Louisiana-Lafayette and bided his time.
“In my first two years there, I was buckling down on my school work and playing flag football and intramural basketball,” Taylor says. “But it got to the point where the guys were telling me that I had to go out for the football team as a walk-on. So the following spring I walked on. It was just a matter of showing the coaches my athletic ability and how I could help the team out. I’ve always been able to out-work others, so that was never an issue.”
Strangely, however, Taylor’s inactivity his first two years at Louisiana-Lafayette didn’t preclude him from yearning to play in the NFL. He had promised his mother Cora years earlier that he was destined for greatness.
“I always said I was going to make it,” he says. “I didn’t know how or what door I was going to go through, but I told my mama when I was 8-years-old that I was going to be in Sports Illustrated someday.”
Taylor fulfilled that dream when he intercepted a pass against the Seattle Seahawks in the 2006 Super Bowl. But, promises aside, such professional success was far from his mind when he played defensive end, linebacker, running back and safety at Abramson. He didn’t even care what side of the ball he was on.
“At that point, I was just enjoying playing football,” he says. “It didn’t matter whether I was playing offense or defense. But I did like hitting, so I was leaning toward playing defense. I didn’t even ever play cornerback until I was in college. I was a running back early on in college.”
Taylor preferred to stay in the offensive backfield, but assistant head coach Gary Bartel urged him to accept the move to cornerback. Bartel believed it would provide Taylor the greatest opportunity to take his talents to the NFL.
“He said, ‘You have the size, the speed, and the aggressiveness and you love to hit,’” Taylor recalls. “He told me that playing cornerback would give me a shot at the next level.”
Bartel was right. Taylor was snagged by the Steelers in the fourth round of the 2003 draft. Though he was raw, he latched on as a kick returner and enjoyed some playing time in the secondary his first two seasons. He grabbed a starting spot in 2005, finishing the Super Bowl championship season with 96 tackles, including 72 solo. He intercepted two passes in the postseason.
But while he celebrated the title with his teammates, his beloved hometown of New Orleans was struggling to recover from Hurricane Katrina. It made the experience bittersweet.
“It really hurt,” Taylor says. “It hurt to see a city go down like that. I knew it was just a matter of time that the place I loved, the place of the Mardi Gras and the best food in the world, would be hit. People in New Orleans were saying for years that it was to happen, but after each hurricane, people said it was all just talk.
“All my relatives were able to get out. That’s the most important thing. You can catch up with materialistic things, but you can’t replace a human life. Everyone is back and everything is cool.”
Everything is cool with Taylor as well. Coach Mike Tomlin has helped Taylor improve his game. Taylor started all 16 games in 2007, and made three interceptions.
“So far, I have a very good relationship with coach Tomlin,” he says. “I can ask him questions on the field or off the field and I can really relate to him. And football-wise, he’s been tremendous. He sees the big picture.
“He told me that I could do the simplest drills and work on techniques in my room before I go to bed. So I’ve been doing that. I tape it and we look it over 1-on-1. It’s been nothing but great news for me.”
The mere fact that he’s dealing with any NFL coach after starting just one season at a mid-major program is a minor miracle - no matter what he promised his mother.
Story courtesy of Red Line Editorial, Inc.