‘A total quarterback’: EWU first-year starter Jared Taylor has confidence of coaches, teammates
The question has been asked almost every time Aaron Best has stood in front of media members since the start of Eastern Washington’s spring practices:
Is Jared Taylor going to throw the football?
Every time, Eastern Washington’s ninth-year head coach has offered the same answer about the team’s sixth-year quarterback: resoundingly, yes.
“That kid’s probably got two chips, one on each shoulder,” Best said of Taylor. “One, because he’s a one-year starter, and another because he’s going to show the world he’s a total quarterback.”
When the Eagles line up Aug. 30 against Incarnate Word in San Antonio, Texas, Taylor will not be making his first start for Eastern; in each of the last two years, he’s made one start in place of Kekoa Visperas. Of the two, Visperas threw the football more. Taylor more often operated as a battering ram behind a veteran offensive line.
But with Visperas gone – he transferred to spend his final year at Tennessee Tech – the starting role fell naturally upon Taylor. And without question, his teammates and coaches have been singing his praises since the start of spring ball, all the way up to mid-August.
To them, without question, Taylor is ready. And yes, he’s going to throw the football.
“He has a commanding voice,” redshirt sophomore quarterback Nate Bell said last spring. “He doesn’t talk much but when he does, you listen. He’s just going about things the right way.”
Taylor, listed at 6-foot, 203 pounds, is no stranger to starting college football games. During his three years at Feather River Community College in California, Taylor went 20-0 as a starter, and across 24 games he threw for 4,211 yards, 45 touchdowns and eight interceptions.
In two years at Eastern, he’s completed 52 of 80 pass attempts for seven touchdowns and one interception.
He will enter the season as one if not the most experienced starting quarterback in the Big Sky Conference, playing on an offense that has lived up to its powerhouse reputation of late, even if that production skewed more toward the rushing game than teams five or 10 years ago. Taylor certainly did his part, rushing for 708 of Eastern’s 2,752 rushing yards, a team total that was second only to championship game runner-up Montana State (4,719) in the Big Sky last season.
Another factor that will shape Eastern’s offensive approach is that it has a new coordinator in Marc Anderson.
Anderson has been with the program in various capacities for 11 years, including the role of associate head coach the last three. Taylor said the two of them are right there on the same page with the offense.
“I’ll sit in coach Anderson’s office and we’ll just scheme plays,” Taylor said. “It’s been a great time. I love being around him. We click, like we were made to play and coach football together.”
After Taylor, the plan with the rest of the team’s quarterbacks isn’t entirely clear, though Best has said he will find a way to get Bell on the field. Last year, after all, the Eagles utilized three quarterbacks – Visperas, Taylor and Michael Wortham – in various ways and often with two of them on the field together.
At 5-foot-9 and 182 pounds, Bell stands as tall as Wortham and is listed five pounds heavier than Wortham was. Taylor and Bell received the bulk of the snaps in Eastern’s first scrimmage, while redshirt freshman Jake Schakel and true freshman Anthony Quinones stepped in with the second- and third-string offenses.
“We’ve had a couple of those guys. Some call them Swiss Army knives,” Best said of Bell. “He’s just a football player. … he’ll find himself in games at multiple positions, to be determined.”
Bell, who threw for 3,945 yards and ran for 1,454 in 27 career games at Liberty High School in Brentwood, California, said during preseason camp that he’s willing to play that part.
“I am glad I am getting a little opportunity here and there,” he said. “Anywhere I am needed.”