A year after career game, Kelvin Taylor has ‘great big chip’ on his shoulder
By Andrew Olson
Published:
When Florida RB Kelvin Taylor ran wild against the Georgia Bulldogs last year (25 carries, 197 yards, 2 TD), it looked as though the former five-star recruit was having his breakout game in his sophomore season. Flash forward one year later, and Taylor hasn’t managed to replicate that kind of performance since the big day in Jacksonville.
Last season, Taylor shared the Florida backfield with Matt Jones. At 6-foot-1, 230 pounds, Jones made for the bigger, bruising back while the 5-foot-10, 205-pound Taylor used his speed and footwork to get into the open field. Jones ended up with more carries than Taylor (166 to 116) over the course of the year, but both were fixtures of the Florida running game.
This year, Jones is working out of the Washington Redskins backfield and Taylor is the every-down back for UF. The junior Gator legacy has already exceeded his carries total from last season with 129 in seven games.
In SEC action, Taylor’s best box scores came against Tennessee (19 carries, 102 yards, 2 TD) when he broke off a 47-yard run, and Missouri (28 carries, 99 yards, 2 TD) when he received his heaviest workload. But he’s yet to dominate a game like the conference’s premier running backs, and is coming off his most disappointing game of the season, 25 carries for only 15 yards against LSU.
“It’s on us,” OG Antonio Riles said this week when asked about the running game. “We’ve gone against some tough teams, and we’re right in the middle of the SEC. It’s all on us. You just have to keep working and doing what you do to get us where we need to be.”
Frustrating for Taylor is that in the season he’s getting the most work, he has to run behind the least experienced blockers in his career. Four offensive linemen from the 2014 team were NFL draft picks, and between injuries and recruiting missteps, the Gators only had six offensive linemen available at spring practice. Some members of the freshman class have helped with size.
“I mean, Martez (OG/OT Ivey), he’s over 300 (pounds),” senior OG Trip Thurman said. “Some of the other guys, Fred Johnson, he’s over 300 pounds. I mean, obviously it’s a physical game up front, but I mean offensive line position throughout college football is more about experience and getting to know that quick first step, and getting that second foot in the ground is tremendous whatever year you are.”
Not many freshmen offensive linemen win the battles in the trenches, especially in the SEC. So even when the big guys can physically get in the way of defensive linemen, they’ve been slow to open holes for Taylor.
“We’ve got a lot of guys working real hard, and we’re doing a good job up front at times,” Florida coach Jim McElwain said at a game-week media opportunity. “We’ve got to be a little patient to the hole and speed through the hole. There’s a lot of things we’ve got to work on that way. But to be a dominant football team you’ve got to be able to stop the run and run the football, and we haven’t done that.”
Even with linemen taking the blame, Taylor isn’t making excuses and is motivated more than anyone to get the running game going.
“I have a great big chip on my shoulder,’’ Taylor told reporters. “We’ll run the ball a whole lot better this week than what we have been. I feel like at some point in time, if you’re a really great running back, you’ve got to make your own holes and you’ve got to make your own decisions and make your own reads.”
Andrew writes about sports to fund his love of live music and collection of concert posters. He strongly endorses the Hall of Fame campaign of Fred Taylor.
