Southeast quarterback Alex Taylor is poised for a breakout senior season

The hardest throws for a quarterback to make are the ones that stretch deep down the field to a wide receiver with only a sliver of space to make the grab. A quarterback needs the blessing of arm strength, and the savvy of touch and accuracy. Particularly at the high school level, an accurate deep ball can be an offense’s greatest luxury.

It was also, somehow, the one piece Alex Taylor possessed from Day 1 back out on the field with Southeast High School. When the quarterback returned to the Seminoles for his junior season in 2016, he hadn’t played since his middle school days, instead committing himself to the Noles’ basketball team.

“I was surprised I could still put a ball up there under them,” Taylor said.

His game still had plenty of holes, but even so he was able to immediately become one of the best signal callers in Manatee County despite his two-year hiatus. His 1,877 passing yards during the regular season were third-most in the county, bested only by a pair of seniors who have since graduated. With a full year under his belt now, Taylor’s senior season in Bradenton should only be better this fall — assuming the gaps he has in his play were filled during the offseason.

Taylor can easily rattle off all the deficiencies he had to remedy during the offseason. He got by with mediocre footwork. He was probably a little too thin. He was succeeding despite a pretty rudimentary understanding of how to read defenses. Even his raw arm strength, he felt, could be significantly improved.

He spent this summer mostly the same way he spent the previous one. He bounced around the state, going from camp to camp, getting exposure to some of the Florida’s other top quarterbacks. He competed at South Florida and Florida International. He went to one of The Opening regional events. He played in the USF Sling & Shoot 7-on-7 tournament with his Southeast teammates, finishing the weekend with an impressive 8-2 record in Tampa.

It was different than the year before, though, when head coach Rashad West encouraged Taylor to attend these camps just to see how more experienced quarterbacks worked. Now Taylor had proven himself a bit and could go into the camps with a plan, an idea of what he would have to work on at each stop.

“That was big for him,” said West, who also serves as the Seminoles’ quarterbacks coach. “That’s been big for him this summer, watching other guys go and see how they go about their job and work.”

Taylor came to the field for the Seminoles with whispers of his potential known throughout the school. Former head coach John Warren spent his two years eternally trying to convince Taylor to play while the quarterback’s classmates could see he was destined for success just by how effortless he could sling a football during pick-up games. From Day 1 of spring practice last year, Taylor slotted atop the Noles’ depth chart.

Taylor’s first start was solid, completing 63.2 percent of his passes without an interception and he topped that completion-percentage mark in each of the next two games. By Game 3 against Bayshore, Taylor was let loose for a 315-yard outing with three touchdowns and a 72.2 completion percentage.

“I already knew what he was bringing to the table,” said Tyler Stevenson, Taylor’s No. 1 wide receiver. “I knew that he would be a good asset to the team.”

By the final five games of the season, Taylor felt he had reached his highest ceiling. He wrapped up the regular season with another 300-yard performance against Manatee, the peak performance of a junior campaign that caught even his coaches by surprise.

Sometimes his first season was a test in patience for the coaching staff — Taylor singled out West’s patience as one of the coach’s strongest attributes — but he mostly lived up to the hype that had built up around him.

This year, Taylor should be better than ever for a team that will need him more than ever. Southeast leaned more on its blitz-happy defense than an explosive offense in 2016. Most of the experience in 2017, though, is on the offensive side and Taylor will be the focal point of everything that happens.

“I felt like I played the best that I could have,” Taylor said. “But this year I plan on doing that and more.”

This story was originally published August 7, 2017 at 4:27 PM with the headline "Southeast quarterback Alex Taylor is poised for a breakout senior season."