Detroit Lions' Teez Tabor gets coaches up now, prepares to coach later

Dave Birkett | Detroit Free Press

Teez Tabor’s NFL career is just beginning, but he already has the end in mind.

When Tabor is done playing cornerback, which he hopes comes many years from now, the 2017 second-round pick said he wants to stay involved in football as a coach.

To that end, Tabor already has started preparing for his next career by taking mental notes of everything his coaches do. The idea, Tabor said, is to take the best of all the coaches he’s played for and embody that when he joins the profession himself one day.

“I want to be around the game of football, so I just learn from a lot of people,” Tabor said. “I’m watching how (Matt Patricia) runs his meetings, how he interacts with his players, how he cares about his players. He definitely cares about his players. Everything he’s done around just everything, I’m just watching and learning so one day (I can do that).”

Tabor has played for three head coaches in the last three years and four since he first enrolled at Florida in the winter of 2014, and he said he’s found traits in each that he wants to uphold.

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From former Lions coach Jim Caldwell: “How he ran his meeting. It wasn’t just always about football, it was about us becoming better men. He would give us stories from ancient times to two days ago, and it was just like you actually learned. It was real cool in his team meetings.”

From Jim McElwain, Florida’s coach from 2015-17: “We just had one team rule and it was: Do what’s right. He gave me this (wristband) that says ‘choices.’ Everybody got the freedom of choice, but not the freedom of consequence.”

From Will Muschamp, who recruited him to Florida and coached the Gators during his first college season: “I love his energy. His energy is by far the best, and his schemes on defense was pretty good.”

And from Patricia: “If I could be like one guy I would want to be like him just because he’s not like, ‘The assistant coaches do the job.’ No, he demands what he wants and I feel like all great coaches have that quality, they’re going to demand greatness out of their players. They’re going to demand everything that they want and they’re going to get it.”

Tabor said he’s found a kindred spirit in Patricia, and not just because he has a realistic chance to get on the field this fall after sitting and watching for most of his rookie season.

“When you love something and have a passion for something, and you see somebody else with that same passion, it’s like, ‘I love you,’ ” Tabor said. “It just raises your passion and energy for that same thing, even when you don’t want to do it.”

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As a rookie, Tabor played in just 10 games, making one start. He saw spot duty on defense and time on special teams early in the season, then pushed his way into the cornerback rotation later in the year.

He made 14 tackles and didn’t have any interceptions, but he put enough on film to warrant a bigger look from Patricia and Co. this spring.

During organized team activities and June minicamp, Tabor worked primarily with the first-team defense opposite Darius Slay. DeShawn Shead has taken those reps so far in training camp, and Nevin Lawson, a starter the last two seasons, is competing for the starting job as well.

Tabor, though, with his size (6 feet, 201 pounds) and skill set, has a chance to not only be in the playing rotation but to start this fall.

“Real good player,” Patricia said. “Plays extremely hard. Works at the game. He’s long, he has just deceiving kind of length and speed. So some of those guys, I know everybody kind of grinds away at the numbers and they look at all of that, but there’s a difference between a guy that has a length of 6 foot and a guy that has a length of 5-9 and his speed. There’s a couple inches there and that relates into his reach and his ability to kind of bracket or cover guys with a broader catch radius because of that length. So we’ll take a look at that as he’s going forward.”

Tabor slipped in last year’s draft because of concerns about his speed — he reportedly ran a 4.7-second 40-yard dash at his pro day — but the Lions don’t seem to share those worries now.

In camp, Tabor’s length has been evident and disruptive, and with his future profession still a long ways off, he's trying to master the job he has now.

“It’s great competition,” Tabor said. “We have a lot of great DBs in our room. Slay, (Jamal) Agnew, Quandre (Diggs), Nevo, Shead. So it’s great competition and that only makes the team better, that only makes our room better.”

Contact Dave Birkett: dbirkett@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @davebirkett.

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