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- Mar 19, 2019
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Graff highlights Taylor’s ‘incredible journey’ in NFL
Jordan Taylor is still one of the fresh faces on the Vikings, but his backstory might be an interesting as anyone.
Chad Graff of The Athletic recently sat down with Taylor to talk about his winding road from Rice University — where he began his college career as a quarterback — to the current training camp with the Vikings.
Taylor spent the first four seasons of his career in Denver, with a coach who is now on Minnesota’s staff. He was on the practice squad in 2015 when future Hall of Fame quarterback Peyton Manning helped the Broncos win Super Bowl 50.
Graff wrote:
His NFL career began with a phone call from Gary Kubiak, then the Denver Broncos head coach and now the man tasked with helping revamp the Vikings’ offense. At first, Taylor was awed by life in the NFL after his years at Rice. Just before minicamp in June, Taylor got a text message from an unknown number. It was Peyton Manning inviting him to a U2 concert.
“You save that number real quick,” Taylor said with a laugh. “So I went to the concert, and we had a blast.”
Taylor detailed his relationship with Manning, which grew when the wide receiver was on the practice squad and the quarterback was rehabbing from a few injuries.
[Manning] just needed a wide receiver to throw to. So Manning phoned Taylor, then the lone wide receiver on the practice squad. He asked Taylor to meet him for early morning throwing sessions, something Taylor initially thought might be a casual affair.
“It was very surreal,” Taylor said. “It was just me and him and the equipment guy snapping the ball. Really just us three. It was awesome to see how he goes about his business when nobody is watching, the cameras are off, he’s still giving it everything he’s got mentally and physically. I mean, we were doing full two-minute drills up and down the field with just us two. My biggest thing was, ‘Be in the right spot and don’t screw this up.’ It was obviously an exceptional learning curve for me to be able to learn from him and spend that extra time.”
Graff’s full feature on Taylor can be found here.
The 6-foot-5 Taylor has been running with the first two offensive groups thus far in training camp.