Davion
Taylor.
Davion
Taylor.
Colorado· 6'0"· 228 lb· 4.49s 40
"A Pac-12 sprinter who never played high school football, learned the game at a junior college, and reached the third round on two seasons of Colorado tape and a 10.51-second hundred meters."Pre-draft read
Taylor is pure speed at linebacker, a Pac-12 sprinter who ran 10.51 in the 100 meters and carries that gear onto the field. When the read is clean he closes faster than almost anyone at the position, running down plays from the back side and covering flat space most linebackers cannot reach.
Everything else is unfinished. He played no high school football and only two seasons of major-college ball, so the instincts lag badly behind the athleticism: he reads late, freezes on misdirection and arrives a beat after the play has declared. He cannot take on and shed blockers and tackles inconsistently in space. The signature is what he does when he is right, and the projection was entirely about whether reps could catch him up to his body.
A one-gap defense with a big line that keeps blockers off him, using him as a run-and-chase weakside linebacker and a speed matchup on backs in coverage.
Year 1 special-teams contributor and developmental project, with a ceiling as a three-down weakside starter once the processing catches up.
A front that leaves its linebackers unblocked-free only in theory and asks them to take on guards and diagnose complex run schemes immediately.
Davion Taylor | Colorado Buffaloes Linebacker | 2019 Highlights
Senior-season cutup showing the closing speed and the range to the sideline.
Davion Taylor (Colorado LB #20) vs Oregon 2019
Single-game all-snaps against a Pac-12 offense, including the processing struggles scouts flagged.
Davion Taylor vs. Stanford Pro-Style Offense | Eagles Rookie Film Room
Team-produced film study of the college tape that convinced Philadelphia to spend a third-round pick.
Taylor grew up in Magnolia, Mississippi, raised by a Seventh-day Adventist mother, and did not play a single down of high school football because games were played on the Sabbath. After turning 18 he was given permission to play, enrolled at Coahoma Community College and spent two years learning the sport from scratch, then transferred to Colorado in 2018.
He started ten of twelve games as a junior with 56 tackles, ten for loss, a sack and a fumble return for a touchdown, then started all twelve as a senior with 72 tackles and eight for loss, serving as a game captain six times and earning multiple team defensive player of the game honors. His two-year Colorado line was 24 games, 128 tackles, 18 for loss and two sacks. He also ran track for the Buffaloes, scoring at the Pac-12 Championships in the 100 meters and the 4x100 relay with a personal best of 10.51 seconds.
Nobody argued about what he was. He was among the most athletic linebackers in the class and among the least experienced, a two-year starter at one Power Five school with essentially six years of organized football in his life. Teams debated whether the speed was worth the runway. Philadelphia, taking its highest off-ball linebacker since Mychal Kendricks in 2012, decided it was and took him at 103.
- 01
Elite straight-line speed
A Pac-12 scoring sprinter with a 10.51-second 100 meters, closing speed no linebacker in the class could match.
- 02
Range to the sideline
Runs down plays from the back side and covers flat and alley space most off-ball linebackers never reach.
- 03
Two-year production curve
Went from 56 tackles as a junior to 72 as a senior with 18 career tackles for loss in only 24 games.
- 04
Leadership despite inexperience
Named a game captain six times as a senior and repeatedly voted defensive player of the game by his coaches.
- 05
Special-teams upside
The speed and willingness to become an immediate coverage-unit contributor while he develops on defense.
- 01
Almost no football background
Never played high school football, arriving in the NFL with roughly six seasons of organized experience total.
- 02
Reads late
Freezes on play-action and misdirection, which wipes out the athletic edge before he can ever use it.
- 03
Cannot handle blocks
Gets swallowed at the second level with no technique for stacking and shedding offensive linemen.
- 04
Inconsistent tackler
Misses in space when he has to break down, too often relying on speed to make up for poor angles.
Relative Athletic Score (Kent Lee Platte) benchmarks combine/pro-day numbers against every measured prospect at the position since 1987. 10.00 is elite; 5.00 is average.
— — — positional median (p50)
- 40 yd
- 4.49sp50
- Vertical
- 35inp50
- Broad jump
- 127inp50
- Three-cone
- 6.96sp50
- Shuttle
- 4.26sp50
- Bench
- 21repp50
| Yr | Team | G | Tkl | Sk | Int | PD | FF |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2018 | Colorado | 12 | 56 | 1 | 0 | 2 | 0 |
| 2019 | Colorado | 12 | 72 | 1 | 0 | 4 | 0 |
| Career | — | 24 | 128 | 2 | 0 | 6 | 0 |
Colorado seasons only, from Sports-Reference; the two years sum exactly to the 24-game, 128-tackle, 18-tackle-for-loss career total. His 2016 and 2017 seasons at Coahoma Community College are not covered by FBS statistical databases and are therefore not included rather than estimated. Colorado official materials list 136 tackles and 20 for loss across 23 games, counting differently from the conference-verified figures. One of his 2018 fumble recoveries was returned 14 yards for a touchdown.
A dash means the figure is not published by a source we trust — never a zero we invented.
A speed linebacker who carves out a role as a special-teams contributor and emergency defensive body.
The ceiling: a rare athlete at the position who grows into a long-term three-down starter once the reps accumulate.
An athletic linebacker whose promising early stretch is cut short by injury before he can establish himself.
Everything above is the pre-draft evaluation. This section is what actually happened — updated year over year.
He was developing on schedule until the knee. Taylor played twelve games as a rookie in 2020 with one start, but logged just 32 defensive snaps against 178 on special teams, exactly the redshirt Philadelphia planned. In 2021 he played 18 snaps over the first four games, then took over as a starter in Week 5 and held the job for six weeks, producing 41 tackles and looking like the bet was paying off, before a season-ending knee injury against New Orleans in November.
He never played another NFL snap. The Eagles cut him at final cuts in 2022 and brought him back to the practice squad, then released him for good in August 2023 after signing Myles Jack and Zach Cunningham. Chicago and Arizona gave him offseason looks that year without a regular-season appearance. He has since played for the Ottawa Redblacks in the CFL. The NFL line reads 21 games, seven starts, 51 tackles and two forced fumbles. In hindsight this was a developmental bet with a real six-week payoff that an injury interrupted at the exact moment he needed continuous reps most.