COLUMBIA, S.C. — When Na’Shan Goddard was hired as South Carolina State’s offensive line coach in summer 2018, he quickly discovered a problem.
“I didn’t have any tackles,” said Goddard, who played three seasons in the NFL. “When you think of a tackle, you want a tall, long-armed, athletic type of guy, and we just didn’t have that.”
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Signing day had come and gone by this point, so Goddard had to get creative.
“I went to a couple of our basketball games and saw a couple of big guys who weren’t playing and asked about their status,” he said. One of those “big guys” was Alex Taylor, a 6-foot-8 forward sitting at the end of the bench in street clothes while recovering from a minor knee injury.
“I was like, ‘Who is that tall, big guy over there?’” Goddard said. “He was kind of thick as well.”
The next morning, Goddard went to the Bulldogs’ athletic training room. SC State plays in the FCS Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference, meaning there’s one training room for all athletes. At the University of South Carolina, which is 45 miles up the road and the place Goddard played his collegiate football, the football players have their own space — meaning the chance meeting that Goddard was about to have with that tall and thick basketball player never would have happened.
If Goddard and Taylor hadn’t met that morning in the training room, Taylor might not be preparing to hear his name called this week in the NFL draft as one of the unlikeliest prospects in the country — and also the one with maybe the most untapped potential.
“The whole scenario, it is movie-worthy,” SC State basketball coach Murray Garvin said. “It’s really movie-worthy how his whole thing happened.”
Goddard still remembers the meeting clearly.
“I said, ‘Big Dog, what you got going on?’ I basically started recruiting him right there in the training room,” Goddard explained. “I was just kind of loving’ up on him, letting him know we had a place for him.”
Goddard and Taylor discovered that day that they had a connection through Pierson Prioleau, who is Taylor’s uncle and was a teammate of Goddard’s on the 2010 New Orleans Saints team that won the Super Bowl.
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“He was like, ‘Come on out there. I can get you right,’” Taylor said. “He said, ‘You know you need to get off that court anyway.’ I knew if I was to go play he would be my coach and that helped give me a little boost. I knew he would be a real cool coach.”
At the time, Goddard didn’t know Taylor had spent the 2015 and 2016 seasons as an offensive lineman at Appalachian State before transferring to SC State to play basketball. All he knew was that he had arms that looked like they could bear hug a redwood.
Taylor’s wingspan measured 88 inches at the NFL combine, the widest at the event this year.
“I saw the measurements, man,” Goddard said. “You don’t see guys that large and that athletic at the same time. Hell, that’s 3 feet of arm right there. You just punch a guy, you’ve already got him 2 feet away from your quarterback.”
He told Taylor then that he had an NFL future. And he meant it. He had seen players built like Taylor before, players like 6-foot-9 King Dunlap and 6-foot-9 Jonathan Ogden, “anomalies,” Goddard calls them.
“My only question was his toughness,” Goddard said. “Was he nasty enough?”
He got his answer the first week of fall practice. Taylor joined the team that fall and in the second day in full pads got beat in a one-on-one pass protection drill.
“These are Alex’s first pass pro reps in two or three years and he was like, ‘Hell, no, hell, no, let’s go again.’ And he killed that boy,” Goddard said. “He punched him, and it knocked his helmet off and the guy fell on his back on the ground and we were like, ‘Oh, shit, this guy is going to be crazy.’”
Two days later, Taylor had earned the starting right tackle job. Two weeks later, he was voted a team captain by his teammates.
“That just lets you know his character and how he handled his business when he got out there,” Goddard said. “He was still very, very raw, but his butt got in there and worked hard every day to overcome that learning curve.”
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Taylor was used to making up ground quickly on the football field. He had never played the sport until his junior year of high school. Until then, he had been following his mother’s footsteps as a star basketball player at Berkeley County High School in Moncks Corner, S.C. He got recruited to the football team the way most big men do in high school.
“It was like, ‘You’re big, you should be playing football,’” Taylor said. “I just one day decided I’m going to go out there and give it a shot. It was something new that I didn’t know. It was an acquired taste.”
He began his career on the junior varsity team but improved enough to earn a scholarship from Appalachian State, where he redshirted one season and then appeared in four games the next. The experience wasn’t a good one, he said.
“App was a good place, but it just wasn’t for me,” he said. “It was just personal stuff that happened with some of the coaches.”
Taylor declined to elaborate but said the time left a bad taste in his mouth for football and made him miss his first love, basketball.
That’s how he met Garvin.
“A friend of mine who is head coach at Timberland High School, Jerome Stewart, calls me up and says, ‘I know this 6-foot-9 kid who is ready to transfer. He plays football but he wants to get back to basketball,’” Garvin said. “Me, I just don’t believe it. I’m like, ‘OK, I’d like to see this.’ I said, ‘Tell the kid to come by and see me.’ Lo and behold, one day Alex walks in the gym and we have some recruits there and he plays pickup with them and after one trip down the floor you are like, ‘Oh my gosh, this guy has Shaq-type athleticism!’”
Murray didn’t have a scholarship available, but he offered Taylor a chance to walk on and prove himself, which involved losing plenty of weight. He had ballooned to 345 pounds after leaving App State.
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Taylor was still rounding himself into basketball shape when Goddard saw him on the Bulldogs’ bench.
By that time, Taylor already was having second thoughts about giving up on football, but he was concerned about abandoning Garvin after the coach had given him a chance.
“Alex thought I was going to be against him playing football, but it’s like a rapper who is trying to be an R&B singer. I said, ‘Man, you need to go make a million dollars if you can. There are no hard feelings,’” Garvin said. “It was kind of a relief for him. He thought I would be upset he was leaving me, but it was all about him doing what was best for him and his family. It’s turning into a heck of a success story, and I can’t wait to see where he gets drafted.”
With Garvin’s blessing, Taylor was eager to take another shot at football.
“I felt like I had stepped away from football too soon, and I hadn’t played my best ball yet,” he said. “I’m like, ‘I’m going to go back because I know I can be good at it.’”
Goddard confirmed that, telling him early in their relationship that he had an NFL future.
“He let me know I had a real shot,” Taylor said. “People would say it all the time, but I had never paid it any attention. I was a little shocked at first.”
NFL Network analyst and former NFL offensive lineman Brian Baldinger has already noticed.
.@SCState_Fb @Tall_inc #AlexTaylor has got enormous size and just as much potential to become a very good player. Which @NFL team is going to make the investment? #BaldysBreakdowns pic.twitter.com/my3dwvu3Ap
— Brian Baldinger (@BaldyNFL) March 31, 2020
Goddard is hopeful Taylor could be a third-round pick but thinks it’s more realistic he will be selected somewhere between the fourth and sixth rounds. Taylor has had FaceTime calls with the Patriots, Bears, Lions and Titans in recent weeks.
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“Of course, everybody would like to be top pick and go in the top rounds, but as long as I get drafted I don’t care,” he said.
The Athletic’s Dane Brugler projected Taylor as the No. 176 pick (fifth round) by the San Francisco 49ers. In his 2020 NFL Draft Guide, Brugler rated Taylor the 18th-best tackle prospect in this class.
“Overall, Taylor lacks sophistication to his game and can be tossed if his posture isn’t precise, but his light feet and length are intriguing beginner traits, projecting as a high-upside zone tackle who will need time,” Brugler wrote.
Taylor knows he’s a bit of a project. He currently weighs 308 pounds, up from the 280 he weighed as an SC State basketball player but not quite back to the 318 he weighed as an offensive lineman at App State. He also has to improve his lower body strength and flexibility.
Taylor said he was disappointed he missed a shot to participate in the University of South Carolina’s pro day as a guest March 19 because the event was canceled, but he thinks he made a good impression in his Senior Bowl and NFL combine trips. He also knows that no NFL team will have any reservations about drafting an SC State player given the school’s long history of producing professional players.
As far back as 1961, when the Los Angeles Rams drafted an unknown named Deacon Jones in the 14th round, the Bulldogs have been turning out NFL players, including defensive back Darius Leonard, the 2018 defensive rookie of the year, and defensive tackle Javon Hargrave, who agreed to a $39 million contract with the Philadelphia Eagles last month.
“The history here definitely made me want to play a little harder because it made me know it was possible,” Taylor said. “They have a rich history of putting guys in the league. I wanted to be a part of that list.”
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Taylor compares favorably to former Gamecocks offensive lineman Dennis Daley, a sixth-round draft pick last year who ended up starting nine games for the Carolina Panthers.
“In my humble opinion, Alex is way better than him,” said Goddard, who will now go back to scouting basketball players for potential tackles. “He’s more athletic. He’s got more of an offensive tackle body. I’m telling you, if you watch (Taylor’s) film from his junior year to his senior year, it is leaps and bounds better.”
(Photo of Alex Taylor at the 2020 Senior Bowl: Don Juan Moore / Getty Images)
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