Safety doesn’t play it safe

There’s one fundamental rule that football coaches at the University of Miami impress on their athletes: make big plays or you don’t play.

It’s no surprise, then, that Sean Taylor spent little time on the sideline in his three years as a Hurricane.

“You can’t be an ’Average Joe,’” the first-team All-American safety said. “You’ve got to make a play out there. You don’t get points for batting down balls. You get points for picking balls off and running the other way. … Everybody can catch an interception. They kind of want to see what you do afterwards.”

Taylor’s speed, instincts and hard-hitting abilities make him one of the top defensive players in this year’s draft class. His uncanny knack for making big plays makes him one of the top safeties ever to come out of college, leaving him in a decidedly advantageous position heading into this weekend’s NFL Draft.

Taylor is almost assured of being taken in the top 10 picks of Saturday’s first round. The Washington Redskins are strongly considering using the No.5 overall pick on him — unless, of course, another team takes him earlier.

“Sean Taylor is a playmaker,” said Arizona Cardinals coach Dennis Green, who holds the third selection in the first round. “He’s a guy who can have eight, nine, 10 interceptions his first year in the league. He has that kind of ability.”

And because of it, Taylor is drawing all kinds of attention from coaches and scouts throughout the league. If Maurice Clarett and Eli Manning were the most talked about players going into February’s combine in Indianapolis, Taylor might well have been the most talked about player coming out of it.

“He’s a game-changer at safety,” Houston Texans general manager Charley Casserly said. “The guy is an outstanding football player.”

Safeties aren’t often thought of as “game-changers.” They might make the occasional bone-jarring tackle over the middle of the field or be the recipient of a well-placed tipped pass, but rarely are they thought of as the focal point of a team’s defense.

Taylor, though, defies conventional wisdom. With 4.5 40-speed, he plays like a cornerback. At 6-foot-2, 230 pounds, he looks like a linebacker. Yet he lines up 20 yards off the ball as a free safety.

The net result is one of the most complete 21-year-old defenders you’ll ever find — and one of the most explosive. As a junior at Miami last season, he tied the school record with 10 interceptions, returning three for touchdowns.

“I was satisfied,” Taylor said of his double-digit picks, “but I would have liked more.”

Perhaps the reason Taylor didn’t surpass his already impressive mark was the fact that opposing quarterbacks finally stopped throwing his way. That kind of respect typically is given to Pro Bowl cornerbacks like Ty Law and Champ Bailey. Taylor, don’t forget, is a safety.

He plays like a Pro Bowl corner at times, though, most notably in a late-season clash with Pittsburgh All-American receiver Larry Fitzgerald. Often matched up in man-coverage against the Heisman Trophy runner-up, Taylor helped hold Fitzgerald to three catches for 24 yards.

Taylor attributes his ball-hawking abilities in part to the excessive amount of time he spends studying game films, something he says he’s done since high school.

“Just reading the quarterback and reading the receiver’s routes,” the Miami native said. “It helps get you that extra edge to the ball and kind of beat the receiver to his route.”

On those rare occasions when he doesn’t get to the receiver before the ball, Taylor reverts to his linebacker mode. His ferocious hits have been likened to those that used to be dished out by Ronnie Lott, perhaps the greatest safety in NFL history.

Taylor has little sympathy for his victims who think he hit them too hard.

“If that was the case, you should have switched over to defense where you can do the hitting,” he said. “If you catch it or come across the middle, or if I get a chance to get a hit on you, I’m going to hit you.”

As for the comparisons to Lott, Taylor shows a brief moment of humility.

“Ronnie Lott did a lot of great things,” he said. “That’s a big name. I don’t know. Wow.”

Then again, Lott was drafted eighth overall by the San Francisco 49ers in 1981. Taylor is likely to go higher than the man who has come to embody his position.

Rarely do safeties garner so much attention on draft day. NFL general managers and coaches historically use their early-round picks on defensive linemen and cornerbacks and wait until Sunday to turn their attention to safeties.

“Traditionally, you can get safeties that can play pretty good for you, even go to the Pro Bowl, in later rounds,” Casserly said. “Corners and offensive tackles [that] go to the Pro Bowl are mostly [drafted] in the first round, when you break it down. So if there’s a choice, you can move the safety off a little bit farther.”

Said Taylor of the lack of respect for safeties in the draft: “That’s something that’s been going on for a long time. I have no say-so. The only thing I can do is do what I can to better my draft status and keep working hard.”

There are signs that the trend is changing. The Dallas Cowboys selected Oklahoma’s Roy Williams eighth overall in 2002, the highest a safety has gone in the last decade, and have been reaping the rewards ever since.

Taylor now looks poised to push the bar even higher. And, if you ask him, he deserves to be drafted ahead of the game’s current top young safeties: Williams and former Miami star Ed Reed, who made the Pro Bowl last year for the Baltimore Ravens.

“I think I’m both combined in one,” Taylor said. “I can hit, I can cover, I can run. I think you’re getting everything in one.”