San Antonio Express-News (Sunday)
Smith: QB Taylor can be leader Texans need.
Veteran quarterback finally given chance to forge defining season for beleaguered franchise
HOUSTON — He is a dual-threat quarterback proudly carving out a new football home inside NRG Stadium.
He won the Orange Bowl in college and, unlike the Texans, has already been a Super Bowl champion.
He’s respected across the NFL and his constantly unpredictable pro career could become an intriguing documentary one day.
The Texans badly need a good story in 2021.
Tyrod Taylor could be a great story.
If he can stay healthy.
If Taylor can keep a rebuilding team, overloaded with littleknown veterans and low-risk contracts, afloat from Week 1 through 18, all while keeping rookie Davis Mills as his backup.
If Taylor can finally discover some lasting good luck and unearth a defining season 11 years in the making.
“To explain (my career), it’s been a blessing,” Taylor said Thursday after another OTA with his new team. “I’ve used everything that has happened to me throughout my college career, professional career, and I think that those experiences have prepared me for the opportunity that I have now, which allows me to go out each and every day at peace mentally, but to compete and have a smile on my face.
“You learn from those experiences, you move forward, you stay in a positive attitude. I think that’s what’s kept me with the right mindset to be able to persevere through the things that have happened to me throughout my career. It hasn’t been all great, it hasn’t been bad. I don’t know how you would describe it. I know that when it comes to the NFL, I’ve been a winner in this league. Yes, I’ve had trials and tribulations, but it’s part of the game.”
A leader
The 6-foot-1, 217-pound Taylor wears No. 5 for the local red and blue.
Fitting, right?
Former franchise QB Deshaun Watson is still listed on the Texans’ roster as No. 4, and it’s only because of everything that the embattled Watson is currently going through and the Texans have been through since March 2020 that the new No. 5 is expected to oppose Trevor Lawrence, Urban Meyer and Jacksonville in 101 days inside NRG.
Taylor starred in Hampton, Va., becoming one of the nation’s top high school QBs and matriculating to Virginia Tech. He immediately faced a collegiate quarterback competition, answering the battle by ultimately throwing for 7,017 yards and 44 touchdowns while running for 2,196 yards and 23 TDs in four seasons under Frank Beamer. But Taylor wasn’t selected until the sixth round (No. 180 overall) of the 2011 NFL draft and spent his initial four pro seasons sitting behind Joe Flacco while Baltimore made three playoff appearances, including two AFC championship games, and won Super Bowl XLVII in New Orleans.
“One of the things about (Taylor) at Virginia Tech was he was a flat-out leader,” first-year Texans head coach David Culley said. “The thing that about him — you talk about all the crazy stuff that he’s been through — is he has such great character. That’s one of the things that when (general manager) Nick (Caserio) started going out and bringing in free agents and with our draft, that’s first and foremost what we want to build here. (Taylor is) the embodiment of that.
“His teammates know what he’s been through. They know how he’s come through it. To go through what he went through in Buffalo and to help lead a football team to the playoffs that hadn’t been in (18) years speaks volumes about what he’s all about.”
The Buffalo years
Oh, yeah. Buffalo.
Going from winning the Orange Bowl with Virginia Tech to being drafted in the sixth round to waiting as an NFL backup QB for four years to becoming a starter would be enough for 99 percent of NFL players.
Taylor, who will turn 32 on Aug. 3, was just getting started.
The opposing QB that Bill O’Brien’s Texans faced on Dec. 6, 2015, in Orchard Park, N.Y., when Brian Hoyer, DeAndre Hopkins, Chris Polk, J.J. Watt and Jadeveon Clowney fell 30-21 to Buffalo?
The Texans’ initial answer to a surreal offseason dominated by national Watson news and constant change.
“I think (Taylor is) legit. I think he’s real. And people are starting to realize that,” said then-Bills head coach Rex Ryan, after Taylor totaled four TDs and threw a go-ahead 40-yard touchdown pass with 1 minute, 53 seconds remaining.
Taylor was selected to his first and only Pro Bowl that year.
Two seasons later — which doubled as Watson’s rookie campaign with the Texans — Taylor went 8-6 as Buffalo’s starter and the 2017 Bills made the playoffs. But first-year head coach Sean McDermott benched Taylor for Nathan Peterman in Week 10, despite Buffalo holding a winning record at the time.
Peterman infamously threw five interceptions the next game. Taylor regained the starting job and two late-season AFC East victories pushed the Bills into the postseason for the first time since 1999.
“He’s a professional, through and through,” said Culley, who was Buffalo’s quarterbacks coach in 2017-18. “He didn’t like it. No one would have. But he handled it like a pro’s supposed to handle it, like a guy with class would handle things. … That just goes to show the professionalism he has and the experience that he’s been around, and it worked out for everybody involved.”
Motivating factors
Buffalo rewarded Taylor with a trade.
In March 2018, he was sent to Cleveland for a third-round pick. The Josh Allen era began for the Bills a month later, when the strong-armed Wyoming QB was drafted at No. 7 overall.
The Browns’ Baker Mayfield era officially began in Week 3 of that season, when the No. 1 overall pick replaced an injured Taylor during a “Thursday Night Football” victory that marked Cleveland’s first win in 635 days.
And that era has nothing on Taylor’s two-season stint with the Los Angeles Chargers, which featured:
• The end of Philip Rivers’ 16-season run with the Chargers.
• “Hard Knocks” during the coronavirus pandemic.
• Taylor earning a Week 1 road win last year against No. 1 overall pick Joe Burrow and Cincinnati.
• Taylor having a lung accidentally punctured by a team doctor before kickoff a week later, suddenly sending the Chargers into the Justin Herbert era.
“I definitely use it as a motivation,” Taylor said. “There’s no bad feeling towards whatever happened in the past. You learn from it, you move forward. I don’t believe in holding on to things. … I’m more so thankful and grateful for the opportunity to be able to lace the cleats up, put the helmet on and go out and make plays.”
One more chance
Taylor’s sincerity, passion and belief in himself streamed through a Zoom interview.
Burnt-out Texans fans have been through this before, though, and two recent seasons already feel like setups for what could follow.
In 2015, a team-created showdown between Ryan Mallett and Hoyer resulted in the one-year Brock Osweiler experiment. In 2017, after Osweiler and his $72 million contract were discarded, the Texans spent all offseason promoting Tom Savage as their new starter. The former fourth-round pick was benched by O’Brien at halftime of a Week 1 loss to the Jaguars, suddenly giving way to the Watson era.
Brandin Cooks, the Texans’ No. 2 wide receiver last season, is now Taylor’s best throwing option. The team’s offensive line is another work in progress, and the backfield will use training camp to develop a hierarchy. Even Taylor’s contract — a one-year deal that can reach $12.5 million but only has $2.5 million guaranteed — highlights the uncertainty that again surrounds the Texans’ QB situation.
But Taylor has already been through Virginia Tech, Baltimore, Buffalo, Cleveland, Los Angeles and a punctured lung.
He was backup insurance when he signed with the Texans and now he’s supposed to be Culley’s first quarterback, despite only starting four games since 2017.
A franchise in need of a good story could have a great one if the new No. 5 can lift these Texans above .500.
Taylor has been given one more chance to prove that he can lead an NFL team forward.
“It means everything to me. That’s why I’m excited the way that I am,” Taylor said. “They say the average NFL career is three years. If you probably go back and look at my draft card, no one probably would’ve predicted I would be one of the four quarterbacks that were drafted that year that are still in this league. I’m excited about the opportunity. I know what I can do. I know what I’ve done in this league, and I know the players respect it.”