Gators’ Bryan ready to finally tap into potential
GAINESVILLE — UF defensive tackle Taven Bryan always knew he was blessed physically, but he never paid it much mind.
Even growing up as a bit of an outlier in rural Wyoming, Bryan did not fully appreciate the gift he’d received.
“I’ve probably been oblivious to it for the most part,” he said. “I’ve been this way my whole life, so I never really, I guess, understood what I was given.
“So I didn’t really take advantage of it.”
Lately, Bryan has begun to tune into a lot of things: his vast potential, his future in football, his closing window with the Gators.
Up to now, Bryan, a redshirt junior with just two career starts, has been arguably the Gators’ biggest question mark — a 6-foot-4, 291-pound “what if?”
Everyone but Bryan seemed to realize how good he could be.
When defensive line coach Chris Rumph arrived two seasons ago, he quickly nicknamed Bryan the “Wyoming Wildman.” But like the Brahman bulls who frequent the rodeo in his hometown of Casper, Bryan could not be tamed. He now enters his third season with just 27 tackles.
“He’s going gray way before his time,” Bryan joked of Rumph. “That’s probably because of us, me especially. I think he sees a lot more in me, and I didn’t do anything with it the first two years.”
After some soul searching in the spring, Bryan believes he finally is ready to meet expectations.
The Gators are counting on it.
No. 17 UF opens the season at 3:30 p.m. Saturday against No. 11 Michigan in the first game of the new season matching top 25 teams. If the last meeting between the teams — a 41-7 Gators’ loss in the 2016 Citrus Bowl — is any indication, the team that wins up front will prevail.
“They definitely came out and outplayed us,” recalled Bryan, who played sparingly due to an ankle sprain. “We just didn’t come prepared.”
These days, prides himself preparation.
Testimonials of his work ethic and feats of Bunyan-esque strength are becoming the stuff of legend at UF.
“Squat, bench, curl, whatever it is. That man is a beast … like a real-life beast,” defensive end Keivonnis Davis raved. “I tried working out with him over the summer, but I was sore the next day. He’s a monster. “It’s crazy.” The son of Brandy Bryan, a former Navy SEAL, Taven Bryan knows no other reality.
From the time he was a child, his father enlisted him to build homes. When the Bryan men were not Bryan on his mixing concrete or swinging, they were traipsing around the Wyoming wilds.
At age 11, Bryan would strap on a 50-pound pack and head into the tundra outside Jackson Hole to hunt mule deer.
“That was some real stuff,” he said. “You get some abs by the time you’d done with that. You’re going straight up … it’s way up there.”
Football soon would take over, eventually turning Bryan into a rare bigtime recruit in the Cowboy State and taking him 1,900 miles away from home.
Without his father available other than by phone, Bryan struggled to stay on track.
“I don’t have someone to motivate me like I normally would,” he said. “If I had my dad here, I think I could play a lot better.”
These days, Bryan’s family is what drives him. Brandy Bryan and his wife, Stacey, gave their son something he no longer plans to waste.
“I’ve been blessed genetically,” Taven Bryan said. “They let me hit the lottery on that one.”
The Gators are banking on Bryan to finally cash in.