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Tar Heels' Taylor still adjusting
Former star at Mount Tabor has switched from tight end to linebacker this year
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Published: August 27, 2008
CHAPEL HILL - Ryan Taylor will start a new football season with new duties and new responsibilities, and he'll go through on-the-job training Saturday when North Carolina opens against McNeese State at Kenan Stadium.
Taylor, a North Carolina junior and Mount Tabor graduate, has switched positions and is now a linebacker. He played tight end his first two seasons.
The position change has forced a major adjustment in the last six months -- Taylor has never played linebacker, at any level.
"I don't feel completely ready to go out there against say, Rutgers, and start," Taylor said. "I'm getting that way, and I feel comfortable I could go out and play if they did need me, but it's taking time. I understand that. It's going great, but it's going to take time."
Coach Butch Davis is confident that Taylor will be an important defensive player, once he gets a feel for his position. Davis puts Taylor among the five or six linebackers he's counting on to form the playing rotation.
"Our level of confidence in him to go in and play linebacker is that he would go out there and he would execute the things we need to get executed for that game," Davis said.
Davis, trying to take advantage of Taylor's skills and to fill a pressing need, came up with the idea of the move last winter. He needs quick and intense linebackers for the kind of defense he wants the Tar Heels to play. Tight end was set with Richard Quinn and Zack Pianalto, and Taylor's playing time there might have been limited.
Davis thought that Taylor would be a perfect fit at linebacker because of his 6-3, 240-pound size and his aggressiveness. Taylor also had played on the kickoff-coverage and return teams for two seasons.
Making the move meant that Taylor would have to give up the chance to catch passes and score touchdowns, but he was willing to switch. He understood that Davis' request wasn't about his play at tight end. He was needed elsewhere. Several other players, including Johnny White and Vince Jacobs, also were moving to fill holes.
"Coach Davis is confident in my ability to learn the linebacker position," Taylor said. "He's been in football so long that I trust what he said.
"And I was ready for maybe a new role on the team. Things didn't work out for one reason or another on offense. I was ready to try a new role at least. I was excited to do it because it was another thing to get focused on and learn and try to do well."
Taylor made the move in spring practice, and that gave him a head start on learning the new position. He said he felt more comfortable at linebacker after spring practice but knew he needed more practice time in summer camp.
Tommy Thigpen, the Tar Heels' linebackers coach, said he was delighted to have an eager new pupil and, like Davis, he considered Taylor a promising linebacker because of his hard-nosed playing style. Taylor showed Thigpen early that he knew how to tackle, the first quality of an effective linebacker.
There were some days in the spring when practices didn't go exactly right for Taylor, and some frustration set in by the end of the day. Thigpen, a former linebacker at North Carolina, realized what was going on and made sure that Taylor kept his confidence.
"Every day he goes out, he gets better and better," Thigpen said. "He's a great tackler, and he has an unbelievable motor. His deal is he wants to play so bad that he's going to do anything he can to help us out. The more he learns, the better he's going to get."
Taylor is playing strong-side linebacker, sharing the position with veterans Bruce Carter and Chase Rice, and he'll start out spelling them. Hardly a day went by after practice started earlier this month that Taylor didn't put in extra work to learn more so that he could keep pace with the competition.
Taylor would return to his room after practice and study the defense for at least an hour. Some days, he studied with Thigpen. During the summer, Taylor tried to devote at least two days to studying with Thigpen or one of the graduate assistants.
Given his new job, Taylor isn't sure if he'll be more nervous than usual on opening day, but he is looking forward to getting his first defensive plays over with and going from there.
"I've been doing this. I've kicked off before, and I've played on some pretty big stages," he said. "I've played at Virginia Tech and at Notre Dame.
"I hope there's a more veteran side of me, but I guess we'll just have to wait until the 30th to see."
■ Bill Cole can be reached at bcole@wsjournal.com.
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