Scanning a freeze frame of the Cincinnati sideline in the moment after Cam Taylor-Britt snatched one of the most incredible interceptions you’ll see, each player offered a different version of disbelief.
Tight end Tanner McLachlan shifted instinctually to “Surrender Cobra” with hands on top of his head.
First-round pick Amarius Mims covered his mouth with both hands while backup center Matt Lee didn’t move, his jaw dropped, frozen in awe.
Wide receiver Jermaine Burton fell to the ground.
Like most of the 27.9 million TV viewers taking in the latest classic installment of Bengals-Chiefs, and Jim Nantz in the booth, those with the best view in the house couldn’t quite fathom what they just saw.
“Oh, what an interception!” Nantz said on the most watched CBS September NFL broadcast since 1998. “My goodness, Cam Taylor-Britt pulled it down with one hand!”
HOLY 😱 What an INT by @CamTaylorBritt_!
📺: #CINvsKC on CBS/Paramount
📱: https://t.co/waVpO909ge pic.twitter.com/f7r9MeCGIv— NFL (@NFL) September 15, 2024
This Odell Beckham Jr. imitation thrust the 24-year-old Taylor-Britt into a national spotlight he’s narrowly missed, despite five picks in his last 10 games. He’s set goals to make his first Pro Bowl in 2024, having earned the role of shutdown No. 1 under coordinator Lou Anarumo.
“I’m trying to do something that’s never been done before,” Taylor-Britt said. “Just catch the interceptions. I try to catch one every game.”
After he caught that one, the rocket might finally be launching for Pro Football Focus’ top-graded corner through two weeks. Perhaps that’s why those who know Taylor-Britt best on Cincinnati’s sideline Sunday weren’t as much in disbelief. Sure, they’d seen this show in practice, but this moment deserved jubilation because they know his path to that rarified air.
There was a time not long ago when it was not only unclear if Taylor-Britt would make physics-defying interceptions in the game, but if an immature rookie would make it to practice at all.
“Back-then Cam,” draftmate Dax Hill dubs it now.
You never quite knew what you would get.
“He didn’t have a lot of bad going on,” cornerbacks coach Chuck Burks said. “He just had a lot going on.”
Taylor-Britt needed to change the way he lived to seize his NFL moment. When he did, it changed everything.
‘Is he in the hospital right now?’
Head coach Zac Taylor recalls it as a training camp walkthrough with a preseason game on the horizon. Nobody could locate their rookie second-round pick out of Nebraska.
“Oh yeah,” Taylor said with a sarcastic laugh when asked if he remembered. “Had a difficult time tracking him down.”
The staff wasn’t the only one.
“We were all calling and he didn’t answer,” veteran corner Mike Hilton said.
As a walkthrough practice went on without him, the murmurs grew louder.
“We are all like, ‘Where is he at?’” Hill said. “Is he OK? Is he in the hospital right now and nobody told us?”
He rolled up to the practice with about 10 minutes left. Judging by the reaction from the staff around him, he would have been better off just checking himself into a hospital and making something up. Instead, a lame excuse was offered to Taylor, who placed it into a large pile of shoddy alibis from immature young players.
They had a problem on their hands. More specifically, Taylor-Britt had a problem on his hands. An outgoing friend to everyone, the young man with the nickname, “Juice” didn’t know how to say no. He didn’t know how to cut people out. As his fame grew, so did his circle — not all with the greatest intentions or similar ambition. An easy trap for a 21-year-old in his first professional job.
“You got certain things you need in your life, some that you don’t,” he said. “Whether that’s people, whether that’s certain things you are doing in life outside of the building.”
Distractions hung over his attention to detail and the trust he needed to earn a spot on the field.
“Not locked in the way you need to be,” Taylor-Britt said.
An early injury put him in the background and he watched despite the team needing help at the position, the lack of trust primarily of his own doing.
Burks was tasked with helping him out of the doghouse and into focus. Taylor-Britt’s infectious energy and personality weren’t channeled correctly. They were creating chaos — and missed walkthroughs.
“Cam is a people person,” Burks said. “Cam wants everybody involved. Sometimes having everybody prevents you from focusing on the things you want to focus on. Really, it’s just growing up. It was simplifying his life in order to do the things he wanted to do.”
‘That’s what will make him All-Pro’
The first time Burks threw a ball to Taylor-Britt, he knew. During the most standard of individual drills at the beginning of his first rookie practice, he lofted it up over his back shoulder.
“He went up and twirled to catch the ball,” Burks said.
No reason, really. Taylor-Britt essentially floated, twisted and went about his business.
Burks didn’t go about his. He immediately wanted to get to work because in a cornerback room full of established veterans and a league where everyone lives in the top one percent of freakish athleticism, Taylor-Britt, quite literally, rose above.
“It was amazing from Day 1,” Burks said. “At that time he was a rookie, there was not a corner on the team that could catch the ball around him like he could on his first day.”
That’s why after Sunday’s interception, the first reaction of teammates and coaches who have been around Taylor-Britt the longest weren’t the same as the rookies in the vicinity.
No matter who you asked about one of the most absurd picks in recent memory, their reaction was the same.
“He does that in practice,” safety Vonn Bell said with a straight face.
Wait, that?
“That’s regular,” Hill said.
Taylor-Britt wears 3XL gloves on his 10-inch hands. That was best in his draft class and no corner drafted in the first four rounds has topped it since. The only corner to even match was Pittsburgh’s Joey Porter Jr., but he’s 6-foot-2. Britt’s a compact 5-foot-10 with a 4.38 40-yard dash turbo boost.
Whether palming a basketball or snagging a pass with one hand out of midair, he’s built for it.
“I’m not normal,” he said.
.@Bengals @CamTaylorBritt_ with one of the great individual plays of the season and from the great Mahomey. #whodey #BaldysBreakdowns pic.twitter.com/9mcooOIxXz
— Brian Baldinger (@BaldyNFL) September 19, 2024
When Taylor-Britt played quarterback in high school he could throw the ball nearly 80 yards in the air and has witnesses to back it up. Before carving out a role as a rookie he served as Lamar Jackson on the Bengals’ scout team.
Taylor watched his alma mater of Nebraska when Taylor-Britt was there and noticed the ability to attack the ball. The puzzle fit together in his mind.
“Some guys just have great hands,” Taylor said. “He’s a quarterback. So his whole life he probably played catch and threw. That translated.”
Revert to August of 2023. One of the primary stories in camp was Taylor-Britt’s daily one-on-one matchups with Ja’Marr Chase building a second-year bump following a promising rookie season. Then, one day filled with another round of those battles, Taylor-Britt takes to the air and extends for a one-handed pick. The play was nearly identical to the one he etched into the eternal NFL highlight reel against Patrick Mahomes.
Every player generally, every corner specifically, needs an elite trait to set them apart and change games. Burks had seen enough and called his shot.
“That’s what will make him All-Pro,” he said then.
‘Some people take advantage of it’
Limitless potential and rare skills are peppered throughout draft boards. Dozens of corners with a unique trait are selected every year. Many crap out.
Coming out of a rookie year where an ACL injury to Chidobe Awuzie forced Taylor-Britt into the lineup and every week drew Anarumo’s ire, like when he met the rookie at the sideline after he made a mistake diving for a pass stating, “Never do that again.”
It eventually took and after his first career interception in a divisional round playoff game against Buffalo, Burks saw a light start to flicker.
“At times, elite athletes don’t trust their elite ability or elite skill set that makes them different from everybody,” he said. “They try to play it safe instead of playing to make plays. After the Bills game, he started to figure out I am actually different than the other guys at the position.”
What made him different was his ball skills. He just needed to trust them. That carried him through an offseason where he started to simplify and declutter his life, on and off the field. He needed to think clearer and more instinctually on the field. That meant studying more, finding professional routines and honing his focus off it. Specifically, cutting some of his worst influences out.
Was that hard?
“Nah,” Taylor-Britt said, without hesitation.
Why not?
“I was just nice, bro,” he said. “Some people take advantage of it. Simple as that.”
The change was obvious for Taylor who could now laugh at the missed practice and transgressions from rookie year.
“He’s done a great job understanding how different this is than college,” Taylor said. “There is no one setting an alarm for you, waking you up, you got to develop your own routine. That’s what I’ve seen from Cam. He’s been the same guy every time he walks into the building. Same energy. Loves doing what he’s doing.”
In 2022, the team loved it right back. After a month of ups and downs to start the season alongside struggling new pieces in the Cincinnati secondary, Taylor-Britt hit his stride with four picks in five games.
Cam Taylor-Britt pick-six for the lead! @CamTaylorBritt_
📺: #CINvsAZ on FOX
📱: Stream on #NFLPlus https://t.co/LxW25sxPWA pic.twitter.com/8ou9t4bP1L— NFL (@NFL) October 8, 2023
Week 5: A pick-six in Arizona on a pass Josh Dobbs ripped on a slant between three players only for Taylor-Britt to snag it through the traffic.
Week 6: A diving interception against Seattle. On a day he out-physicaled DK Metcalf, he dropped off his assignment to grab an errant Geno Smith pass while parallel to the ground.
Week 9: He catches the Bills’ Josh Allen trying to squeeze a hole shot against zone and jumps the route.
Week 10: Another pick-6, this time he jumps a CJ Stroud crossing route that he got beaten on earlier in the game to pull Cincinnati within three late in the fourth quarter against the Texans.
“Whenever the ball is thrown,” he said, “my mindset is not a PBU.”
|
Cornerbacks
|
Team
|
INT
|
PD
|
|---|---|---|---|
 Derek Stingley Jr. |
Texans
|
6
|
14
|
 DaRon Bland |
Cowboys
|
5
|
6
|
 Tyrique Stevenson |
Bears
|
5
|
14
|
 Cam Taylor-Britt |
Bengals
|
5
|
12
|
 Rasul Douglas |
Bills
|
4
|
7
|
Taylor-Britt was rolling and the Bengals were, too. Four days later, they went to Baltimore on a Thursday night and everything changed. That night Joe Burrow snapped a ligament in his wrist but lost in the story of the year was Taylor-Britt also going down. Just as his star was on the rise, an ankle injury dropped him to injured reserve, not returning until the night the Bengals were eliminated from the playoffs in Week 17.
The momentum was squashed, but he could sense how all he’d been through set him up for this moment. He didn’t feel like a lost kid anymore. “Back-then Cam” was something he, too, could laugh at. The future looked different now.
“I can feel it,” Taylor-Britt said. “Even on the field in my decision-making and off-the-field decision-making. Just wanting to do certain things and not sit out from certain events, it’s turned out great for me.”
‘Only thing that compares would be winning the Super Bowl’
University of Nebraska deputy AD of student services Dennis LeBlanc has worked at the school for 42 years and helped countless former football players finish their degrees. Those typically come when a player is wrapping up his career and thinking about the next stage of life. Rarely when he’s 24 and is just taking off. So, when Taylor-Britt expressed interest in finishing his final semester to get his degree this spring, he jumped to assist in any way possible.
That meant starting a group text with Cam and his mother, Courtney, better known as the “Momager,” for all things Taylor-Britt.
“When Cam was here in school I was on his butt all the time,” LeBlanc said, who noticed the change this time around. “This was pretty seamless. I was able to leverage his mom because I know how much his mom means to him and how important it was for him to get this done.”
Taylor-Britt might be growing up, but what gets his attention hasn’t changed in 24 years.
“(LeBlanc) knows if he calls Courtney, she is going to get on me,” he said, laughing. “We don’t have time for that.”
It worked and Taylor-Britt did have time to walk in the graduation ceremony in June. He beamed with pride. He bowed. He waved and accepted cheers from the Husker football fans in the building. Then after, he shed tears with his family.
Congrats @CamTaylorBritt_!
Proud of you 🎓(credit @mrscourtneeeeee)pic.twitter.com/p4zcCURwp1
— Cincinnati Bengals (@Bengals) May 18, 2024
A kid from humble beginnings in Montgomery, Alabama, he’d never left the country until this year, on a trip to the Dominican Republic, and he never saw this level of impact coming from a ceremony.
“Only thing that compares would be winning the Super Bowl,” Taylor-Britt said. “That’s a great accomplishment for me. Lot of people don’t do that. For me to do that, where I’m from, I just showed a lot of people what is possible. We did it.”
His degree is in criminal justice with a minor in child family services. He wants to work with kids. He’s always brought big-kid energy to the football field, so leaning into his personality makes sense.
“I want to be that light for them,” he said.
He wasn’t just about words, along with getting his degree, he started youth camps in Montgomery and Lincoln and began working toward one in Cincinnati.
Last Friday, he rolled over to a local high school football game by himself, just to hang out, taking selfies with students and young kids, staying involved in the community. Much different way than he used to spend his Friday nights.
“It’s really the natural maturation of a person before our eyes,” Burks said. “Seeing him graduate. Seeing him do his camps. Seeing him in the community. Those are all things he wanted to do and was inspired to do but he had to fix himself first. It’s been a pleasure to see that unfold.”
Grateful for an amazing day at the #CTBCamp at my second home, Memorial Stadium! Shout out @octanefootball, parents, campers, volunteers, staff, and sponsors!! Watching these young athletes learn, grow, and have fun was truly inspiring.
Keep chasing your dreams!💪🏽 #JuiceGang🧃 pic.twitter.com/k4zy8eeDWb— Cam Taylor-Britt 🧃 (@CamTaylorBritt_) July 7, 2024
‘He’s become the leader of the room’
When the Bengals drafted an outgoing cornerback and former team captain from the Big 12 in the fifth round this year, Josh Newton, the similarities weren’t lost on Taylor-Britt. Recognizing his role on the team now, he picked him up from the airport when OTAs began.
He enters his third year where an exodus of team leaders has given heft to his voice. Heft he earned. He’s the one advising the rookie making silly mistakes now or dealing with adversity.
When seventh-round pick Daijahn Anthony committed a fourth-and-16 pass interference to turn the game in Kansas City, he was devastated at his locker, sitting alone in silence. It was Taylor-Britt who came out of the shower and immediately started pumping Anthony up, breaking the ice to initiate rebuilding his confidence.
“He’s grown so much,” Hilton said. “He’s become the leader of the room. He’s not taking success to his head. He wants to do better.”
Is he ever. Through two weeks, PFF has him graded as the league’s top cover corner and second-highest graded corner overall, allowing just three receptions for 53 yards with seven tackles and the interception. His path to Monday Night Football and the rest of this season is set up to potentially solidify him as worthy of All-Pro. Plays like his pick of Mahomes are hard to forget when voters cast their ballots.
He’s made headlines talking trash along the way, taking a shot at Chiefs rookie Xavier Worthy for only being able to “run straight” and weighing “100-some pounds.” This week he referred to Washington keeping the game plan simple for rookie Jayden Daniels, running “a nice college offense.”
Taylor-Britt doesn’t regret any of it. He believes in himself and not going to start hiding his confidence. Even after he got burned in the first half by Mahomes and Rashee Rice for a 44-yard touchdown pass where he let up too early on the go route, not factoring for Mahomes’ arm strength.
That’s where Burks interjects.
While everyone wants to talk about the insane physical freakishness displayed in his one-handed interception that lit the Internet on fire, Burks wants to talk about how that was a mental play. It was teach-tape technique on the exact same route he gave up the score in the first half.
He recognized where he failed and made a necessary change. Sounds familiar.
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Fittingly, Taylor-Britt’s brightest moment of his young career was a direct result of maturating.
“The most important thing about that pick, it was after he had adversity,” Burks said. “Lot of corners, once they get beat they panic throughout the rest of the game. They don’t have the mental toughness to get beat, fix themselves and then make a game-changing play. That is something that was more impressive. The catch was amazing, but the situation within the catch was incredible as well.”
(Top photo: Scott Winters / Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
