Week 1 Chicago Bears' defensive hero is a perfect fit for team's mentality

Taylor Doll wanted to get some insight into her Monster of the Week, Chicago Bears defensive end Darrell Taylor, so she called up a couple of people who know him well for her latest Making Monsters podcast. She spoke with Darrell’s dad, Darrell Sr., and his high school football coach at Hopewell High School (Virginia), Coach Ricky Irby, about the journey that led Darrell Turner to the NFL.

Doll kicked her pod off with Darrell's father, and he told her about how losing his mother at an early age drove him towards athletics.

"When he lost his mom, it really sparked something for him to strive for; it really pushed him. I pushed him also, but I think the desire to make his mom proud of him, I think that's what got him to the point he's at today. I'm so grateful that his mother was who she was." 

Football wasn't Darrell Taylor's passion early in high school, but he rediscovered his love for it at the perfect time in his life.

“I think he thought he could be a basketball player,” Darrell Sr. told us, “which he was good at basketball, it’s just that his position wasn’t right. Then, once he started back playing [football] his junior year of high school, that’s when it really kicked in. That was a place where he could release all his anxieties, everything that he had built up in him. Anger, whatever he had going on, because he’s like me. If you see us out, we act crazy, and we have fun, but we are introverts, we’re big introverts, so he keeps everything inside, and football was an outlet.” 

Darrell's dad told us his son was excited when he was traded to the Bears, because he'd be back to playing defensive end.

“He loved the defense because he said the first thing he can do is, just like always, he can go forward. You don't have to do a lot of different stuff. He's going to eventually have to do a lot of different stuff, but right now, he can just go forward.”

Darrell Taylor has become an immediate fit with the Chicago Bears' defensive philosophy.

“His motor is to get the quarterback.”

Coach Irby joined the show in the next segment and talked about Darrell's athleticism, which he saw immediately.

“Yeah, the first time we saw him up here, he played middle school football for us, and he came up here as a tall, long, lanky kid as a ninth grader on our JV team, and we knew he was a special athlete," Coach Irby told Doll. " Some of the coaches that played against us, they used to call him the Under Armour Mannequin because he was just a freak of an athlete.”

When Coach Irby finally got his hands of Darrell, he played him on offense and defense.

"He was a wide receiver, but he also played outside linebacker for us, and we would bring him off the edge a lot obviously as what you see now with him doing full time with the Bears, but he was a guy that could catch a screen pass and go 80 yards." 

Check out Taylor's full podcast in the enbed below for her fantastic interviews.

If you prefer video, you can watch the interviews at our YouTube channel here.

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