BEYOND
taylor decker
It’s strange as a lineman to talk about myself, but here we go.
I started playing football in second grade because I wanted to be just like my older brother, Justin. He was a left tackle, he was No. 68, and he was really good. Truthfully, he guilted me into playing. He’ll be all right with me saying that because we’re best friends.
Ever since that first practice, football has taken me on an incredible journey, which has allowed me to experience incredible highs, incredible lows, and learn a lot in the process.
I came to Detroit as a 22-year-old kid, and today I’ll be starting in my 100th game for the Lions. I’m 30 now, I have an amazing wife, Kyndra, and a beautiful daughter, Daisy, and even though I have some grey hairs and things that nag me from time to time, I’ve never felt better.
I was brought here with the purpose of helping turn this team into a winner. On my first day as a Lion, I was told I should be here for the next 10-15 years, and ever since then, I’ve been committed to being part of the solution. I’ve always wanted to represent this city and the people here the right way, and I hope to spend my entire career here because it’s that meaningful to me.
But somewhere along the way, I lost perspective. I lost my joy for the game, and I had gone through this metamorphosis of a kid who was in awe of the opportunity in front of him into a veteran player that was fueled by a resentment for losing. There were times where I felt like quitting, but I would tell myself that I could make it one more day.
My initial plan was to stop playing football prior to my junior year at Butler High School because I was getting mid-major interest as a basketball prospect. My high school football coach, Greg Bush, sat me down and was like, ‘Just give me one more year. I really think you can go somewhere with football, even more so than basketball.’ I credit him for having that tough conversation with me, because I really thought basketball was my route for a scholarship and I was content to move on from the game. I ended up playing two more years with my friends, and as a senior, we gave our team a winning record for the first time in eight years. They eventually retired my number and inducted me into their hall of fame. Being recognized at any level is a major honor and something that I’m proud of.
I grew up less than an hour from Ohio State, so playing for the Buckeyes was always the dream, and things started to click for me as a sophomore. I started at right tackle, and I was getting better in practice every day going against guys like Joey Bosa. As a junior, I flipped over to start at left tackle, I have Zeke Elliott running behind me, and we beat Oregon to win the first College Football Playoff National Championship as a No. 4 seed.
Prior to my senior year, I asked our strength coach to submit my name to the NFL to see what my draft projection would be, and it was, ‘Maybe late first, probably second round.’ But Ohio State meant so much to me and was the pinnacle, so I wanted to play my senior year with my friends and try to win it all again. We didn’t end up repeating, but I achieved personal goals like being named First-Team All-American and I continued to hone my craft against future NFL players.
Everything in my life to that point had been centered around football, and the NFL was the next step in my journey. I’m proud of the legacy I left behind in both high school and college, and I hope I’m remembered for winning and success at both stops.
the NFL was the next step in my journey.
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My trainer, LeCharles Bentley, always told me, ‘It does not matter who is lined up across from you. You’re going to do the exact same thing that you always do, and ultimately, that guy across from you has to beat you. You just do what you do.’ I took that to heart and applied it.
My first regular season game was on the road against the Indianapolis Colts. I had to line up one-on-one against Robert Mathis, who was a killer for them for a long time. I remember having to pee every five minutes because I was so nervous, and I remember thinking, ‘I haven’t even had enough water to need to pee this much.’ That was the most nervous I’d ever been, without a doubt. I slept terrible the night before the game, and even though I knew I was hydrated, I dealt with the cotton mouth, where everything is just dry, and you feel like you can’t swallow. But the game went well, and I remember seeing my parents after the game and being encouraged by a positive first step.
The next week was my Ford Field debut against the Tennessee Titans, and I just remember the environment being incredibly loud. The entrance was really cool, something that you don’t really have in college. I remember singing along with the national anthem, saying a little prayer and looking around like, ‘Phew, this is cool.’ On the two-minute drive we had at the end of the game, I got brushed into Matthew Stafford by Brian Orakpo and we ended up losing. I played a good game, but all I could think about was that sack, and I’m just like, ‘(Expletive), that’s not good enough.’
That feeling of – even though it’s one play – you still failed. It’s miserable. That’s the bane of every O-lineman’s existence. Nobody cares about all the good plays; they care about the bad play. That kind of stuff drives you to keep getting better because you’re going to keep seeing guys that have the capability to beat you.
We had a bunch of exciting games in 2016, seemingly winning every game on a two-minute drive. We made the playoffs and got smoked by the Seahawks, but I was expecting postseason appearances to be the standard going forward. Except the next time we got there, we needed to win.
Overall, I thought my rookie year went really well, but I just couldn’t turn football off. I was always thinking about football, because without fail, every practice and every game, you’re going to have at least one play that you’re going to want back. I would just think about those plays all the time, and it was exhausting. I’ve always had a productive paranoia about me, like I’m not doing enough to be prepared, or that I could be doing more to be prepared. Ultimately, I think that mindset has served me well in my career. But early on, it was an unhealthy balance for me.
That feeling of – even though it’s one play – you still failed. It’s miserable.
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I tore my labrum during OTAs prior to my second season.
I knew something wasn’t quite right immediately when it happened, but I knew something was seriously wrong when I was watching an NBA Finals game with Joe Dahl and Graham Glasgow later that night and couldn’t lift my cup of water from the table without
immediate pain.
The surgeon who performed my surgery recommended that I take the whole season off. I managed to return after five months, and I played eight games that year. I had no frame of reference on missing time with an injury up to that point, but watching my teammates play without me was foreign to me and I just missed being out there.
I had friends and trainers tell me it was not a good idea to return so quickly because I had a great rookie season and a promising career ahead of me, and one wrong move could re-damage my shoulder and cause much bigger problems. Looking back, I probably should have listened to them, and I aggravated that shoulder just about every day. But I wanted to be back for my teammates and returning to help the team win was something important to me since that was what I was brought here to do.
But we missed the playoffs.
We fired one regime and brought in a new one.
And for the first time in my life, football started to feel more like the cutthroat business I’ve always heard about and less like the game I grew up loving.
Anger can be incredible fuel, but when it is your sole source of fuel for an extended period of time, it will wear you down.
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I’m embarrassed in hindsight to say that after the second year of my career, and in the years that followed, I became jaded. I was unapproachable. A lot of things pissed me off.
I always personally viewed myself as a winner, but we weren’t winning. We just weren’t good. You didn’t get that feeling on Sunday that you were going to go out there and dominate. I don’t know, it’s almost like you were treading water trying to stay afloat, and you’re like, ‘(Expletive), here we go again. We’re down by 14, we’ve got to go two-minute for the rest of the game.’ And you can’t quit – even if you feel like it. You’re never going to quit no matter how bad it gets because the struggle comes before progress.
You know the quote that Stafford gave some years ago, when the team was bad, he was hurt, and he was asked why he decided to play? And he said, ‘It was a Sunday in Detroit, and I’m the quarterback.’ That quote had always stuck with me, and I had always tried to embody that mindset to help the team, but it wasn’t easy.
It sucked rarely playing games that truly mattered. Every game means something to you as a competitor, but it’s not like we were playing for the playoffs or anything. Nobody’s firing up our games at 1:00pm except for Lions fans on Sundays. So, I would answer the bell as a competitor every time even without the hope of the postseason.
Unfortunately, in Years 3 and 4, I got caught up in the big picture. I was consumed with too many things outside of my control. Nothing seemed to be going right for us, and we didn’t seem to have the answers. My job is to play left tackle, not to think about what’s going wrong with the big picture. But those thoughts crept in, and I’d find myself thinking about what’s going on with the entire team in addition to thinking about how to improve my individual craft.
I’d keep a lot of people at arm’s length, and I thought that’s just how things were going to be. I still couldn’t turn football off and these frustrations and feelings continued to follow me when I left the building. We’re losing, and because we’re losing, I’m a loser. At my core I know I’m not, but I couldn’t shake that feeling. ‘Well, what’s your record? Did you go to the playoffs? Did you win a playoff game?’ We just weren’t respected. I think that’s ultimately the biggest thing; when you don’t win, nobody respects you. Even though your whole life revolves around this sport and your profession, it seems like it was all for naught because it’s a results-based business.
Your family, friends and hobbies take a backseat to football because the time is now in this League, and here I was giving everything to this game just to have my team laughed at and joked about. Winners are remembered, and I felt like my football life was going to be completely forgotten.
That was a hopeless feeling.
The caveat to all of that is I’ve always taken pride in my personal craft as a professional athlete, regardless of my mood. So, I could go about my day and perform out of anger. Looking back on it, that was extremely exhausting and frustrating for me.
Anger can be incredible fuel, but when it is your sole source of fuel for an extended period of time, it will wear you down.
I wanted what I was doing to mean something, and the constant beatdown made me lose my love of the game for some time, and I hadn’t even realized it.
It’s May of 2021 and I’m on my third regime in five years. I tried to be the good soldier every time, but I started to look at the day-to-day through tired eyes, not fresh ones. All of the losing in my career up to that point had bogged me down, and I just couldn’t shake it. Sure, I could go about my day fuming and still perform, but how did that affect others around me?
I was going to have my annual meeting with Hank Fraley during OTAs, and had stopped in to say, ‘What’s up?’ to Ben Johnson on the way. Ben was a coach who carried over from the last regime and was a guy I trusted and respected. We were talking about scheme and personnel and things like that, and I don’t know how we got into it, but we just started talking about the thing that was frustrating for me, which was my legacy as a player. It wasn’t what I wanted it to be at that point, which really ate away at me, and that feeling had continued to snowball over the years. I didn’t want my legacy to be as a good player who never won anything, and that’s just kind of why I was frustrated all the time.
Anger continued to be my motivation.
Ben told me, ‘You are the type of player that you can go out there and play at a high level in spite of that, but you can do more to help other people. You can set an even better example to all of the new guys, and even just for you, just for yourself. Try to hit the reset button and see where it goes.’ Hank added that I needed to let go of the anger and not impose my personal experiences from the past on the future. I needed to re-wire myself and go back to my first year, where it’s like, ‘Wow, this is cool. I’m going to do my best and I’m having fun.’
I trusted that both of them had my best interest at heart, I knew they were genuine, and I knew that they cared about me as both a player and a person.
Focusing on only what I could do to improve myself made things a lot more manageable, and it was liberating for me.
Stacking days of feeling good mentally revitalized my passion for the game. I kept having small victories in film, treatments, workouts, etc. Those small victories began to make me feel like a winner, and that started to reflect in my play. When I felt myself veering, and the old mindset creep in, it was the same thing – telling myself I can make it one more day.
Within weeks, I felt a huge burden lifted off me.
Years from now, when I look back on my career, I know that these will be the sweetest years I’ll have with the fondest memories as I continue to move forward with a newfound perspective.
Everybody believed in Coach Campbell from the jump, and the belief he instilled in us has reflected in our play, which has created impactful moments for me with my teammates, family and the fans.
After the Packers game last year, I got over 500 DMs from fans on Instagram. I remember one of them was from a guy who watched the game with his dad in the hospital, and he said he’d never seen his dad so happy before. Obviously, his dad’s in the hospital not doing well, but we gave joy to people who were hurting. For other people going through struggles – whatever they may be – we’ve been able to provide a three-or-four-hour recess for them to escape and feel like they’re part of this. Fans always say ‘we’ and ‘us,’ and they were part of that night with us at Lambeau on the national stage.
Some people can’t afford to go to a game, so all they have is training camp. Nearly every day of camp this year, I went to sign autographs because for some people, all they want is 10 seconds of your time for a picture or a quick conversation. This year, I had people tell me, ‘You didn’t quit on us or try to get traded. You didn’t want to go somewhere else or bad-mouth the team in the media. You just did your job and stuck through it.’ I’ve never felt so appreciated here, and it’s almost like they’re as happy for me with the success we’re having as I am for them. I don’t take it lightly that Lions fans have been dying for a winner long before I got here.
As a player, you want to be humanized to the fans, but in recent years, it’s been humanizing to hear stories from the fans directly and see what this era of Lions football means to them.
We have plenty of prime-time games this year, my parents call to let me know whenever the Lions have highlights shown on ESPN, and it just feels different with this group of players and coaches.
Fans always say ‘we’ and ‘us,’ and they were part of that night with us at Lambeau on the national stage.
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If I had to sum up my legacy at this point, I think it’s resiliency. Quitting is way too accepted in society, and people embrace taking the easy way out when things get hard. I wouldn’t last 100 games with this team if I didn’t continue to add value, and ever since I stepped foot on campus at Ohio State in 2012, I can say with confidence that I’ve never taken more than 10 consecutive days off doing something football related. You can’t afford to, or you’ll be left behind. The more miles you put on your body as a veteran player, the more time you spend off the field to maintain your edge. You still have to go out there and be that guy, whether you’re 30 years old in your eighth year starting your 100th game or you’re 23 starting your 10th game. I think that’s the hardest thing.
MY 100TH START
BEYOND
This afternoon, I’ll soak in the entrance, kiss Kyndra and Daisy, sing along with the anthem, say a little prayer and think, ‘Phew, this is cool.’
I’ll head back home with Kyndra and ask if she ordered the eight-corner, well-done, butter crusted Jet’s pizza with extra cheese or if she needs me to.
We’ll walk in the house and spend an hour playing with our daughter and talking with my parents and mother-in-law. When our daughter wears herself out from crawling all over the couch and making all sorts of noises, we’ll take her up for bath time and read her a book. My wife will feed her, and I’ll rock her to sleep.
When I’m home, I’m Taylor the dad and Taylor the husband, not Taylor the football player. Separating football from family has allowed me to better perform both roles when I’m in those spaces.
I cannot stress enough how big of a role your support system plays in being a professional. As a kid, it was my parents who afforded me every opportunity possible, and they were the ones who were simply always there for me. Nowadays, it’s a wife that maintains a loving, nurturing, peaceful home for me, all while juggling being an incredible mother, part-time athletic trainer and cooking nearly every calorie that I consume. Lastly, my daughter makes it impossible to not burst with love and happiness when I see her laugh and smile and call me, ‘Dada.’
Balance.
When I get back in my car and drive to Allen Park tomorrow, my purpose flips back to being part of the solution here and getting this city what it deserves.
The NFL and the Detroit Lions have given me so much. Football is bigger than any one player, and I have been fortunate to play a part in the story here.
But I have a lot more to give to this game and to this franchise.
And the only way to do that is to approach game No. 101 the same way I approached game No. 100 and every game that came before it.
