Taven Bryan Gets His First Taste Of Jaguars’ Rookie Minicamp

Taven Bryan loves playing football. The first-round draft pick of the Jacksonville Jaguars met with the media on Friday after the team’s first rookie minicamp session, bright-eyed and all smiles.

It’s only natural that a kid from Wyoming who played his college ball at the University of Florida would wind up playing in the NFL for a team in north Florida, right? After answering questions about everything from what it was like in his first time in a Jaguars’ uniform to what fancy thing will he buy once he signs his rookie contract, Bryan was as excited as a kid at Christmas, even referring to being able to practice and play football 16 hours a day as “pretty sweet,” much to the delight of the reporters inside TIAA Bank Field.
Personally, I think he will fit in just fine on a team with plenty of personalities and a desire to make it one step further than last year – to Super Bowl 53 in Atlanta.
“It’s awesome to be able to dedicate 100 percent of your time,″ said Bryan. ″There’s only 24 hours in a day and you get to spend 16 of it doing football. It’s pretty sweet. It’s like the ideal job in my opinion.″
Bryan will get a feeling for the NFL over the next few days in Jacksonville while he and 68 other players show the coaching staff what they can offer to a playoff team from 2017. The goal as head coach Doug Marrone said when he was interviewed during his press conference, is for these young players to come in and show they can unseat a veteran, which means there is talent replacing talent.
First, they must learn the basics of being good listeners and doing the essentials of becoming a solid football player on the pro level.
For Taven Bryan, it will start out as baby steps, but the Jaguars envision the defensive tackle getting 25-30 reps a game and moving inside and outside in the defensive line rotation. But for now, Bryan and the other neophytes are just getting their feet wet in the shallow end of the pool.
″We’re basically playing in our pajamas,″ Marrone said. ″We’re not tackling, not doing things of that nature. So it’s very difficult to give an evaluation.”
Taven Bryan will be asked, along with fellow rookie and second-round draft pick to show they can be a leader as well as a productive player on the field. There may be veterans on the roster who are leaders in the locker room and on the field, but Marrone looks at everything that encompasses a player’s profile, even before he steps onto the practice field adjacent to the stadium. Now, Bryan is playing at a higher level with players who are just as hungry to make a first impression.
He said he has received several messages from veterans on the team who are waiting to see what the new kid can do to help the Jaguars raise their game just a bit more.
″They have let me know that I’m welcomed and they’re looking forward to helping me out. You got to work your way in, start at the bottom,” Bryan said.