Menu
September 30, 2016

Landry: Hard-hitting Loffler a throwback to old times

Johany Jutras/CFL.ca

He’s getting a reputation, that Taylor Loffler.

It’s a good one, too. A reputation for being an artiste of sorts. One that is adept at big hits, explosive in nature, spectacular to see.

The Winnipeg Blue Bombers’ rookie safety is throwing his body around with what you might call little regard for his own health, but the 24-year-old says it ain’t like that at all. No, he says, being proactive when it comes to inevitable collisions with receivers is actually good for one’s health. Or, at least, not bad for it.

“I’ve never gotten injured hitting someone,” Loffler says. “If you’re tentative, that’s where injuries occur again.”

You may have noticed he said “again” at the end of that last sentence.

Loffler knows the pain of injury and the gritty road to get back on a football field through extensive rehabilitation. Twice he had surgery on his right knee, as a college player. Had surgeries on each of his hips, too. And surgery to repair a sports hernia, as well. None of the injuries suffered, he maintains, came from his laying a lick on a receiver.

“If you just run through people, you don’t have the impact on your body as much,” Loffler says, explaining that a more cautious approach can lend itself to a defender hitting a ball carrier on an angle, or off-centre, or with a twisting motion and those are all things he declares to be bad when it comes to the art of the big boom.

RELATED:
» A team by team look at the 2016 CFL Draft
» Taylor Loffler by the numbers
» Bombers, Esks square off in Pick ‘Em Marquee Matchup
» Buy: Esks at Bombers tickets

 

Taylor Loffler likes to hit. Likes talking about hitting, too. He’s like a throwback to the old days, when free safeties were called “rovers” and their legion was thick with seekers and destroyers. Not that you don’t still see free safeties that can bring the hammer; it’s just that there’s something in the way Loffler plays that suggests another time in football history.

“You could call me old school,” he says. “I think that’s still a big part of the game. Being a big hitter as a safety.”

“I’ve always kinda played like that.”

Ever since taking over the starting safety’s role with the Bombers back in Week 6, Loffler has been garnering notice and praise for his steady play, punctuated with the occasional air-sucking hit. He’s been good enough that there’s no reason to expect him not to hold on to the starter’s job and his name has slowly but surely crept into Most Outstanding Rookie conversations.

Loffler’s tallied 31 tackles on defence – another five on special teams – and picked off two passes while registering a sack. Those numbers have primarily come in the eight games he’s started, with just one of the defensive tackles coming during the first four games, when he was backing up the man he replaced, the injured Macho Harris.

In his first game as a starter, Loffler separated Edmonton’s Adarius Bowman from the ball with a well-timed shot. He took on the league’s wrecking ball receiver, Montreal’s Nik Lewis, in Week 10, knocking the nearly immovable object off his feet. In Week 13, he grabbed more attention with a clean but extremely firm hit on Argos’ quarterback Dan LeFevour — then came up with what is his favourite blast of the year, a perfectly-timed launch at Toronto receiver Tori Gurley along the sidelines, causing a spectacular incompletion and succeeding in creating a sight that has been rare: Gurley being slow to get to his feet as he collected himself afterwards.

“Kinda the one that sticks out to me is the one on Gurley because I thought I’d be able to intercept that pass but as I was running over there, I looked up and the ball was right in the sun. So, next best thing, just put a big hit on him, so that’s what I did. I’d say that’s probably my favourite one of the year so far.”

“You could call me old school. I think that’s still a big part of the game. Being a big hitter as a safety. I’ve always kinda played like that.”

Taylor Loffler

Johany Jutras/CFL.ca

It hasn’t taken Taylor Loffler long to earn a unique status in the CFL (Johany Jutras/CFL.ca)

Asked what that high velocity collision with Gurley – a bull of a receiver at 6-foot-4, 230 pounds – felt like, Loffler reiterates his belief that a hammer doesn’t feel it like a nail. “A hit like that, the speed I was coming at, you don’t really feel it,” he says. “I basically match the biggest receivers, size-wise.”

That type of hit is the kind of thing the 6-foot-4, 220 pound Loffler wants to keep on dishing out as he proceeds to make his name in Winnipeg and around the CFL. It would be a good thing, he says, if opposing receivers were aware of him and his building reputation with each passing week.

“If you put big hits like that on guys, over time they’ll be looking for you instead of the ball and that’s where drops happen. That’s what I try to do. Make them look for me instead of the ball.”

Don’t get the wrong impression here. Loffler isn’t just a human bullet train, barely clinging to the rails as he rounds the corners, looking for calamity at the expense of design. Those two interceptions – and his description of the play on Gurley – are indicators that he will play the soft game and try to be a ballhawk when the opportunity is presented.

He made one of the more amazing interceptions ever at a CFL Combine last March even if he underplays it. “I wouldn’t say it was amazing,” he says. “I should be able to make plays like that.”

Loffler has seemingly breezed into the CFL after being selected in the third round of the 2016 draft. His past surgeries, no doubt, had general managers nervous about selecting him, otherwise he’d have gone higher, maybe even in the first round. That he has slipped into a starting role so quickly might have surprised him a little but the comfort he says he felt fairly well right away is partly attributable to his own old-school football-ready brain.

Johany Jutras/CFL.ca

Loffler tries to knock down a pass by Darian Durant vs. the Riders (Johany Jutras/CFL.ca)

“It’s never really been a problem for me to understand defences,” he says, adding that his teammates have helped him adjust to the pro game.

“It’s been a pleasure to play with all these guys so far.”

I’d hazard a guess that his teammates feel it’s been a pleasure for them so far, as well, with Loffler continuing to lock in and propel himself at opposition targets, nevermind the injuries and surgeries that have come before.

“I never really think about it,” he says. “I mean, injuries do happen in football. I know that because I’ve had so many. If you’re thinking about it and playing tentative, that’s where injuries happen again. So I don’t think about it and just do what I do.”

Sounds to me like something a good ol’ fashioned rover would say.