Carmel freshman QB Trae Taylor is football-smart beyond his years

J.R. Taylor used to threaten revoking his son’s computer privileges if his room was not sufficiently cleaned.

In Trae Taylor’s case, the computer was not used for games usually associated with pre-teens. If his room was too messy, Taylor could not break down football videos of what offenses were doing with his father.

Suffice to say, Trae Taylor is built different than most kids.

Which is why Taylor, who lives in Lake in the Hills, has seven NCAA Division I scholarship offers before he has taken a snap of varsity football at Carmel High School in Mundelein.

Michigan, Colorado, UNLV, Miami (Fla.), Maryland, Marshall and Central Michigan are the first seven on what promises to be a lengthy list of schools that will offer to Trae Taylor.

Taylor, who is 6-foot, 160 pounds, has swift feet, a strong arm and an off-the-charts football IQ for someone who will be 15 on Sept. 2. He always has had that drive to be the best.

“It’s because the NFL is my dream, a lot of people know about that,” Taylor said. “A lot of people don’t know my real dream is to be in the Hall of Fame. I want to be considered one of the best players. That’s where a lot of the drive comes from.

“I don’t train with a lot of kids my own age. If I go somewhere, a lot of the time I’m training with juniors, older kids. I know they’re older, but I look at it as I should be better than them. That’s how I have to look at it. If you just say, ‘They’re older than me, that’s why they’re better,’ then you’re just making excuses.”

J.R. Taylor, who teaches at District 155′s Haber Oaks alternative school, played at Eastern Illinois University and roomed with Panthers quarterback Tony Romo on road trips. He played with the Green Bay Packers for one season, played several seasons with the Montreal Alouettes in the Canadian Football League, then finished his career with the Chicago Slaughter in the Arena Football League.

J.R. Taylor appreciates his son’s insatiable appetite to get better.

“For the most part he does this on his own,” J.R. Taylor said. “We don’t have to fight him on much of anything that he needs to do. All summer, most kids stay up late and sleep in. All summer he went to bed early and he was up at 5 every morning for a Zoom session. It’s amazing at how driven he can stay. He misses a lot of things, but it never seems to bother him too much.

“This is OK to have this attention early. He stays well-grounded, which is a huge plus. Our biggest thing is being a great human. Football’s going go take you as far as it can and getting an education is great, but being a great human is the ultimate key. I don’t care who offers you what, you better be nice to the person who’s standing next to you. He does a good job of that.”

J.R. Taylor is an assistant coach on Carmel coach Jason McKie’s staff. The Taylors visited the school when Trae was in seventh grade and he was a ballboy for the Corsairs last season.

Carmel’s plan is for Trae Taylor to play the first half of the junior varsity game, leaving him with eligiblity for two quarters in the varsity game. The Corsairs have senior quarterback Johnny Weber, who committed to D-I Southeast Missouri last month, who will start. McKie said the coaches are still figuring out how to distribute the quarterback repetitions.

Destined for football

Trae Taylor had footballs in his crib, attended Slaughter games with his mother Hilary shortly after he was born and was constantly tossing footballs around as a toddler. As a player, he started out at running back, but switched to quarterback and scored on his first play at that position. When he threw his first touchdown pass, he was really hooked.

“I had the ball every play (as quarterback),” he said. “That’s the one thing everybody wants, they always want to have the ball. That’s when I started liking it. Now, you have control what happens with the ball.”

Around age 8 or 9, playing with the Lake in the Hills Junior Eagles, Taylor displayed a strong arm and really got serious about football.

“It was fun to throw it over people,” Taylor said. “A lot of defenses couldn’t play far back, so I’d throw it deep and (my receivers) would just go get it. I really liked it. That kind of got me started.”

Trae had the obvious physical talents, so J.R. Taylor started looking for coaches to help his son with the mental aspects of the game. They found Donovan Dooley, who runs Quarterback University out of Detroit.

Dooley will sometimes come to Illinois to work with players. Other times, they spend time at his facility in Detroit.

“Third grade was when it got serious, we needed to find coaches to help with the mental aspect,” J.R. Taylor said. “There were a lot of trips to Michigan for him to work out and learn the game. Coach Dooley did an amazing job giving him foundations of basic coverages, how to look at what you’re doing in different coverages. That’s probably the reason we couldn’t stay around here, there was no one here who wanted to do it at that age. Coach Dooley said, ‘I’ll do it. He’s young, but I’ll start it.’ "

QBU has a video on its website from a year ago with Eastern Michigan signee Drew Viotto; Belleville, Michigan, quarterback Bryce Underwood; and Taylor in an interview. Taylor takes some good-natured ribbing in the video about all the questions he raises in QBU classes.

Carmel coaches and players see that every day.

“He wants to know, which is good, that means he’s paying attention,” said McKie, a former fullback with the Bears. “He wants to know because he wants to be successful. When you don’t ask the question and go out and mess it up, that means you weren’t paying attention. You don’t care. He cares. He’s a perfectionist.”

The Michigan connection

Taylor used to play with BOOM 7-on-7 football for training and competition. Now, he works with Sound Mind Sound Body Sports Academy in Detroit, a group run by coach Chris Blackwell.

“We go to a bunch of camps. That’s a big reason I’ve had so much exposure,” Trae Taylor said, “not only seeing competition other places. If we have a tournament in Miami, we’ll also go see FIU, Miami, a lot of colleges. We go to the beach, we hang out. It’s a lot of teaching you how to act when you get to college and how you can act independently. Sound Mind Sound Body helped a lot with my exposure.”

Dooley also has Taylor working with quarterbacks coach Steve Wilson, a former NFL player in North Carolina, who did Zoom sessions a few mornings each week with Taylor.

“Coach Wilson has taken it to another level,” J.R. Taylor said. “He’s taken the foundation that Dooley gave him and he’s building on top of that. Add the extra stuff to it.”

Although he is physically blessed, Trae Taylor feels his best attribute is how he thinks.

“I know the game really, really well,” Taylor said. “Yesterday in practice we had four verts, defense rolled the safety, I checked something, we had the check, it was going to work. One of our receivers thought the safety rolled down the opposite way. We put on the film and I told the receiver, ‘I’m never going to throw you the ball if they rotate to you. I want to throw away from their rotation.’ It’s little stuff like that that not only helps me, but helps the team.”

The Corsairs admire their precocious new teammate.

“His ability to process the game is impressive,” Weber said. “He’s always got a reason as to why he does stuff, which is really important to have, especially at such a young age. He’s above his years to be able to walk out there and do something and when coach says, ‘Why’d you do that?’, he has an answer right away.

“That’s huge. Not a lot of freshmen will be able to say why they did it, they’re just say, ‘I don’t know, I did it.’ To be able to understand the game and ‘this is what’s happening so I’m going to do this,’ he’s light years ahead of everyone else his age and it benefits him.”

Taylor got to know the players last year as ballboy and became better acquainted over the summer at workouts.

“Trae’s IQ, his level to understand the game, is a quality I’ve never seen before at such a young age,” receiver Torey French said. “We’re in meetings and coaches are telling us what to do and what to look for and Trae already knows what’s coming. That’s what I really like about him.”

Beyond his years

Everything Trae Taylor does – lifting, conditioning, throwing, studying – has brought him to this juncture.

On many mornings this summer, Taylor, who lives in Crystal Lake South boundaries, ran to Indian Prairie Elementary School where he would run a hill behind the school with Crystal Lake Central’s Jason Penza, George Dimopoulos, Tommy Hammond and Tommy McNeil. Then, they would go to nearby Ken Bird Park and throw passes.

Taylor also trains at MT Training in Cary, run by former Cary-Grove player Marcus Thimios.

McKie was impressed with Trae right away when the Taylors came to tour Carmel.

“The first thing I learned about him was how mature he was for an eighth grader,” McKie said. “Then, knowing him and being around him more it was his work ethic. He works hard, extremely hard. He’s on Zoom calls at 5 in the morning. He’s always working at his craft, throwing, getting better, working on his footwork, running hills, conditioning, he’s got that drive.

“His parents are doing a great job, driving to Michigan, giving him opportunities. They’re attentive to details. It’s no surprise he’s getting so much attention because he’s earned it. He’s definitely earned it. He’s got the tools that can take him a long way. He has all the athleticism, but the main thing about him is his character.”

Carmel offensive coordinator Rashied Davis, a former Bears receiver, marvels at Taylor’s grasp of offense.

“He asks so many questions. And they’re good questions,” Davis said. “Sometimes he sees things I don’t see before I see them. For a kid who’s 14, going into his freshman year, he’s way ahead of the game.

“He’s gotten taller. When I met him, he was 5-5 or 5-6. Now he’s 6-0. That’s good. Scouts that are offering scholarships are happy now. It’s all about measurables.”

Trae Taylor was thrilled to meet Bears quarterback Justin Fields this summer when Fields stopped by a Corsairs practice. Taylor hopes he can do things and eventually reach levels that Fields has.

“It was really cool. I talked to him a lot,” Taylor said. “He’s going to try to come to a couple of our games. He’s a really chill guy. He was quiet at first. Then, he got more talkative. I asked him a question, ‘How much faster does it go?’ He said the linemen are so much faster. He said he could get away from everybody, but he couldn’t get away from (Cleveland’s) Myles Garrett.”

Taylor had one request, however, that might be tough for the former Ohio State quarterback when they see each other again.

“I have a pair of Michigan cleats I asked him to sign,” Taylor said, grinning. “He said he would. He’s really nice.”