51 - 1 Days to Purdue Football: Nick Taylor

There are officially 50 days until Purdue football, but we (read I) dropped the proverbial ball and somehow missed long snapper Nick Taylor the second time I made the schedule. If you’ve been following along at home, Purdue shuffled the roster and changed numbers midway through the countdown. We’ve been in contact with Coach Walters and he assures us this won’t happen again (this is a joke, please don’t get mad). I could skip over the long snapper, but Hammer and Rails is a long snapper ally and will not stand for special teams roster erasure.

Without further ado, ladies and gentlemen, I present Nick Taylor.

Nick Taylor

Indianapolis, Indiana (Lawrence North)

Long Snapper

Redshirt Junior

6’4”, 225

2023 Projection: Compete For Long Snapping Job In Fall Camp

Taylor, comes from just down the road in Indianapolis. The Lawrence North product bided his time behind 6th year senior Nick Zecchino and now gets the opportunity to fight it out with Missouri transfer Daniel Hawthorne in fall camp for the starting job.

Thus far, Taylor has appeared in one game for the Boilermakers (vs Indiana State last season), which is one more game than 99.999% of the planet (approximately). It’s going to be hard to beat out Hawthorne, a former starter at Missouri with 27 games under his belt, but there are no guarantees for a walk-on long snapper other than hard work and sacrifice.

I’m telling y’all, I’ve got nothing but respect for the walk-ons. They pour the same amount of blood, sweat, and tears into Purdue football as every other player on the roster, and have no expectations in return. You want to see a guy who loves football, check out Nick Taylor, because he’s grinding away on the practice field, hitting the weight room at the butt crack of dawn, and sitting through endless meetings with no expectation other than the opportunity to wear a Purdue jersey.

When he’s not firing the pigskin between his legs and getting beat up on by 300 pound defensive linemen, he’s hitting the books. Taylor is a two time member of the Academic Big10 team and has a double major in Biomedical Health Science and Spanish. If this long snapping thing doesn’t work out long term, it looks like he’s got a solid fall back option.