Assessing the Aggies: Bobby Taylor
Shoutout to the recruiting maestro himself!
Helloooo everyone! Welcome back to the 12sReport, and today is Day 3 of my Assessing the Aggies series. This series will profile a member of the 2022 Texas A&M football team every day up until the season starts. Hopefully, it will give fans an in-depth look at many potential contributors to the Aggies for this upcoming season. Yesterday, we looked at Devon Achane, one of the projected stars of next year’s squad. Now, onto today’s player:
Bobby Taylor, CB, Freshman
6’0”, 180 pounds
#193 player in the country, #25 cornerback, #30 player in Texas
He hasn’t even played a snap for the Aggies, but Bobby Taylor is already a fan favorite amongst the Texas A&M faithful. One of the first commits of the historically great 2022 recruiting class, Taylor was A&M’s ace recruiter throughout last year’s cycle, helping reel in several top prospects and being a key influencer for the 2023 cycle as well. In addition to being a star recruiter, Taylor is not too shabby himself on the football field, ranking as a four-star prospect and a top-200 player in the country in the 2022 recruiting cycle. Playing football runs in his family, as his father was an All-American at Notre Dame before being taken in the second round of the 1995 NFL Draft by the Philadelphia Eagles.
What Taylor brings to the Aggies is a lot of athleticism and an aggressive play style. His hyper-competitive nature shows in his game, with his physicality and bigger frame (6’0”) being standout traits. At The Opening last year, former NFL defensive back Ryan Clark was impressed by Taylor’s performance all day.
"I think he can really play. He's fluid and he's aggressive," Clark said in an interview with Sports Illustrated. "What I like about him, is that he gave up a catch in the first game on a play he should have made and I told him 'look, it's about the competition, it's about competing, it's about working. It's about effort.' And since then, he hasn't had an issue. It was just him understanding the speed of it, and once he understood the speed of it, he's truly been the best defensive player on our team. And, you know, I think the sky's the limit for somebody with his type of talent, his type of skill, but also that type of competitiveness."
While Taylor has had the spring to train with the Aggies, a leg injury will keep him out for the remainder of the offseason. With a stacked cornerback room including the likes of Jaylon Jones, Denver Harris, Tyreek Chappell, Myles Jones, Brian George, Marquis Groves-Killebrew, and Deyon Bouie, the Katy product may have an uphill battle for extended playing time out of the gate. If he continues to shine in practice, though, he could work his way into more playing time later in the year and eventually a much more expanded role in 2023.
That’ll do it for Bobby Taylor’s preview. Here is the next player’s hint:
The first out-of-Texas player to be covered, he made the 2021 All-SEC Freshman team despite not being a regular starter last season.
As always, if you’ve made it this far I just want to thank you for reading! I appreciate all of the views and I’ll do my best to deliver good writing! Have a great day <3
-Sourav
I expect him to be a starter before the end of the season