With one game and one season to play, Noah Taylor is approaching a crossroads in his college football career.
Taylor will be at linebacker for Virginia in next week’s season-ending Fenway Bowl against SMU. Then he’ll have a decision to make: Stay at UVa for his fifth year? Or jump to another school for that final college season?
Those are questions he doesn’t intend to answer until after the Cavaliers’ bowl game.
“Right now I really want to focus on beating SMU,” Taylor said on Wednesday.
Taylor has made his share of highlights for the Hoos in recent seasons. He was second on the Coastal Division championship team with seven sacks in 2019. He also blocked a punt to set up an early touchdown as UVa opened that season with a win at Pitt, and had a pair of interceptions in the Wahoos’ streak-snapping win against Virginia Tech to end that regular season. Taylor’s 85-yard pick-6 against Louisville last year was the longest interception return by a linebacker in program history.
He led the defense in both sacks (3 1/2) and tackles for loss (8) this fall, but that wasn’t the dominant performance that Taylor envisioned for his fourth year. He entered the season saying “I know I can be and will be the best defensive player in the country.” Instead, amid a historically down season for the UVa defense as a unit, Taylor logged just one sack and four tackles for loss in the Hoos’ final 10 games.
It’s one reason why Taylor, who entered the transfer portal on December 6th, is considering a change of scenery.
“I kinda just want really a new environment for myself,” he explained. “I'm kind of going back and forth. Like do I really want a new environment? Or do I want to, you know, a goal that I had coming in here was to be the best linebacker to ever come out, and obviously that didn't happen. So I kind of want to come back and do that again, and kind of prove myself and show everyone how good of a player I really am.”
“So it’s kind of just like this constant back-and-forth like, ‘What do I do? What do I do?’” the 6-foot-5 linebacker continued. “So that’s what really makes it a hard decision.”
Taylor is just one of the Wahoos facing such a decision in the near future. As of Thursday, 18 UVa players had put their names in the transfer portal. The large majority of those players entered the portal after head coach Bronco Mendenhall announced on December 2nd that he will step down following the bowl game.
Given the uncertainty Mendenhall’s announcement brought upon the program, those players in the portal have been permitted to continue practicing with the team and can play in the bowl game. All but three—quarterbacks Ira Armstead (who has committed to Eastern Illinois) and Jacob Rodriguez and defensive lineman Jordan Redmond—are still with the program.
Center Olu Oluwatimi, a finalist for this year’s Rimington Trophy, has been linked to Michigan. Left tackle Bobby Haskins, who won’t play in the bowl game following recent surgery, has been connected to USC.
Five other players on the team-issued two-deep for the bowl game are currently in the portal, including three additional starters—Joe Bissinger at left guard, Ryan Swoboda at right tackle and Aaron Faumui at defensive end. Another defensive lineman, redshirt freshman Olasunkonmi Agunloye, was briefly in the portal last week before withdrawing his name.
Some of the looming uncertainty was resolved when Clemson offensive coordinator Tony Elliott was hired as Mendenhall’s successor on December 10th. But Elliott has yet to announce any additions to his coaching staff. Mendenhall has urged players in the portal to wait until those position coach vacancies are filled before ruling out a return.
“It's UVa. Where would they go and why that could be better?” Bronco explained on Wednesday. “But certainly the people matter, and so I've just asked them to wait as long as possible to see who will be the next version of UVa, and then make sure that's considered.”
Mendenhall acknowledged that “outside sources” could be leaning on those players in the portal to make what he believes would be a hasty decision.
“I want them to see everything,” he added. “I want them to know all their options and I prefer they all remain [at Virginia] to continue on. However, they get to choose, just like coaches get to choose, and I think that's fair. But my hope is that they would not choose until they know exactly what happens here.”
Taylor, for one, has elected to heed that advice despite hearing from, as he described it on Wednesday, “too many” schools after he initially entered the portal earlier this month.
“It has its goods and its bads,” Taylor said of entering the portal. “It’s good because you just realize how much people like you, how many people think that you’re such a good player. But I guess the bad side of it is you get a lot of hard decisions to make.”
As of Wednesday afternoon, Taylor had yet to have a one-on-one conversation with Elliott about the new coach’s plans for the program. Ideally, the linebacker said, Elliott would have his new staff in place by the end of December, which would allow Taylor and his teammates in the portal to make a more informed decision.
But Taylor says he’s determined to block out those questions for the next week. He believes his fellow Hoos in the portal are taking the same approach. Once the Wahoos get back from Boston, Taylor will reach his impending career crossroads.
“Personally, I want to give it my all,” he said. “Just show these coaches how hard we’ve worked to build this program over the past six years, and just how much we’ve done. And obviously, previous games didn’t show that, so we’ve got one more chance to show how good we really are.”
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