Kelvin Taylor is a freshman at Glades Day in Florida. That video is of him playing for Glades Day as an eighth grader last year. This report is about the state championship Glades Day won yesterday. If you think this is all too much, too soon, this is the carnage Taylor has left strewn in his wake:
⇥Taylor, the son of former Glades Central and Florida Gators standout Fred Taylor, ran for 1,158 rushing yards and 19 touchdowns on 146 carries in Glades Day's four post-season games. He piled up 1,439 yards and 28 touchdowns on 149 attempts in the regular season.
That is a high school freshman rushing for nearly a mile in both the regular season and playoff portions of his year. That's an average line in the playoffs of 36.5 carries for 289.5 yards and 4.75 touchdowns per game. That is a player carrying his team to glory by any means possible. That's impressive.
The 76 touchdowns he's scored over two years, which puts him within striking distance of the state record of 107 as a sophomore in 2010? That's excessive.
Though Glades Day is in the small-school 1B division in Florida, it's hard to ignore those sorts of numbers against any competition. It's no shock that he's drawn interest from Florida and Tennessee already. He seems like a superstar-to-be, a mega-recruit in the making that will be slobbered over by scouts from sea to shining sea.
But there are any number of ways Taylor -- whose status as the son of the fifteenth-leading rusher in NFL history seems like a footnote -- could be done with football before high school even ends. And I wonder whether the upswing in concussion concerns will temper some of the enthusiasm for such a bruising runner.
So let's acknowledge what Kelvin Taylor is right now: Possibly the most remarkable high school football player in America. It's worth paying attention to his story not to hype him, but to enjoy the ride.
This post originally appeared on the Sporting Blog. For more, see The Sporting Blog Archives.