WESTFIELD — Cam Taylor-Britt finally feels like himself again.
Taylor-Britt has been a No. 1 cornerback for an NFL defense, a 2022 second-round pick who looked like he was going to become a franchise cornerstone in Cincinnati.
Then he lost his way. Taylor-Britt can admit it now, acknowledge that he started to struggle on the field and didn’t handle it well, sending him into a spiral that cost him the place he held in the Bengals defense and led to a reckless pattern of driving that eventually sent him to jail and earned him a one-game suspension at the start of this season.
The now-Colts cornerback simply could not get his head back into the right space.
“I can honestly say, outside of football is what everybody saw, the aftermath of that stuff,” Taylor-Britt said. “Being not myself inside the building, taking stuff inside the building that didn’t matter. I think every NFL player has something going on, but it’s how you handle it, and I think I learned from my mistakes at the end of the day.”
Taylor-Britt looked like he might be headed for stardom in 2023. Deployed as Cincinnati’s No. 1 cornerback, he limited opponents to a .567 completion percentage and a rating of 78.3 when he was the nearest defender in coverage, picking off three passes in the process. The next year, Taylor-Britt set a new career-best with four picks, but his coverage numbers rose (64.8% completions, 98.3 rating) and Cincinnati’s defense bottomed out, costing highly respected coordinator Lou Anarumo his job.
All of it messed with Taylor-Britt.
“My play,” Taylor-Britt said. “I’m my biggest critic, in a sense. It was my play, and I’d beat myself up so much, there was no coming back from it. I had teammates right there waiting, trying to uplift me, but there’s some things that you have to do on your own as a man.”
He couldn’t pull himself out of the cycle. Two driving incidents that ended in arrest happened off the field, and on the field, Taylor-Britt lost his starting job in Cincinnati, riding the bench until a Lisfranc injury ended his season prematurely. Four years into his NFL career, Taylor-Britt should have been cashing in on a lucrative second contract as an established NFL starter; instead he had to convince the Colts to take a flyer on him with a $1.4 million, one-year deal.
The reality of his situation got Taylor-Britt’s attention.
“You get in trouble when you were younger, I don’t think the whippings or anything did anything,” Taylor-Britt said. “Taking football away from me did. Having to go sit down and watch things, it made me realize that football’s not forever.”
Indianapolis represented an opportunity to find himself again.
The Colts hired Anarumo after the Bengals let him go, and a rash of injuries at cornerback last season showed Indianapolis that it needed another starting-caliber cornerback, even with former All-Pros Sauce Gardner and Charvarius Ward on the outside and a promising young player, Justin Walley, moving into the slot.
A week in New England proved how much the Colts needed to sign a high-upside player like Taylor-Britt. Fellow backup cornerbacks Mekhi Blackmon and Johnathan Edwards played 783 and 313 defensive snaps last season, respectively, but both struggled in man-to-man against Patriots receivers in a joint practice and then in Thursday night’s preseason game.
Neither will be the first cornerback onto the field if something happens to the top three. Ward is currently out with a back injury, and the last two days, Taylor-Britt has been in the slot, allowing Walley to slide outside to play opposite Gardner.
“Right now, he’s playing that nickel, he’s playing that corner, getting all those valuable reps, because we’re looking for him to be the first guy that’s going to go in if any of those three go out,” Colts secondary coach Chris Hewitt said. “He can go in there and play any of those positions. … He’s that guy.”
Taylor-Britt has earned that role because he fits the man-to-man style that Anarumo wants to play.
An imposing physical presence, Taylor-Britt’s strength at the line of scrimmage has caught the Colts’ attention in training camp. While he hasn’t really played the slot since his college days at Nebraska, his mentality fits the position.
“Toughness,” Indianapolis head coach Shane Steichen said. “A lot of physicality.”
Taylor-Britt's foot is healed.
He’s in a scheme that fits him.
“It’s man-to-man, it’s body on the body,” Taylor-Britt said. “He wants us to challenge receivers.”
Taylor-Britt is playing cornerback like a pit bull.
Like a player who realized he almost lost the game he loves.
When he says he’s found himself again, Taylor-Britt believes his turnaround is complete.
“All the way,” Taylor-Britt said. “I’ve been through the worst of the worst, I think that’s past now, and we’re looking forward."
Joel A. Erickson and Nathan Brown cover the Colts all season. Get more coverage on IndyStarTV and with the Colts Insider newsletter.
This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Football was taken away. That's when Colts CB Cam Taylor-Britt finally got the message.