West Virginia University football tight ends accounted for 16.6 percent of the Mountaineers’ receiving output last year, and the position group will look nearly identical this fall.
In the latest edition of Gold and Blue Nation’s WVU football roster review series, we take a look at assistant coach Blaine Stewart’s tight end room.
Kole Taylor was WVU’s third leading receiver in 2023, and he returns as a senior for his second season in Morgantown this fall.
According to 247Sports, the 6-foot-7-inch, 250-pound tight end was the No. 4 high school prospect out of Colorado in 2020, and he committed to LSU as a three-star recruit. At LSU, he recorded 17 catches for 159 yards and a score in three seasons before transferring to WVU. Fifty-five of the 159 yards came in 2022.
Last year, he was WVU’s primary pass catching tight end and logged 444 receiving yards (12.7 yards per reception) with four touchdowns.
Taylor missed WVU’s spring program after receiving offseason shoulder surgery, but he is expected to be ready for the Mountaineers’ season opener against Penn State.
It might not look like it on the stat sheet, but Davis (two receptions, two yards in 2023) is coming off another productive season in Morgantown. He played in all 13 games as a special teamer and the team’s No. 2 tight end, which is primarily used as an extra blocker in the running game.
“He’s always kind of been the big, strong [player],” Stewart said. “[We] love his physicality, but if he wants to take that next step, when we work with our nutrition staff, there is a re-composition process of his body, and he did that. He didn’t lose any weight, but his body fat went down by about three percent.”
He is expected to take on a similar role in 2024.
As a pass catcher, his best season of college ball so far came in 2022 when he recorded five catches for 51 yards as a redshirt freshman.
With Taylor limited in spring ball, redshirt sophomore Will Dixon joined Davis with the first teamers in practice.
“Will can get on the board and draw any play,” Stewart said. “But we’ve got to make sure that [with] all young tight ends that when that picture changes of a defense, you know the intricacies of the ‘why,’ and Will has started to show that.”
He redshirted as a freshman in 2022, and he appeared in five games, primarily on special teams, last fall.
The Hillsborough, New Jersey, native averaged over 13 yards per reception with four touchdowns as a senior in high school. He also set a single-season school record on defense when he recorded 13 sacks as a senior.
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