Tory Taylor, an Iowa punter, will not return to Iowa in 2024; instead, he will enter the NFL Draft after the 2023 season.
News: Iowa punter Tory Taylor does not intend to return to Iowa for his final year of eligibility. He may use his extra year of eligibility for the 2024 season, but he told reporters on Tuesday that he does.
Taylor will play one more game with the Hawkeyes this season before entering the 2024 NFL Draft to begin his professional career.
Taylor, an Australian who is originally from Melbourne, has made a name for himself as one of the top punters in the nation.
Taylor is averaging just under 300 punting yards per game this fall, or 47.6 yards per punt. Out of his 64 punts this season, 25 have come inside the 20-yard line. Taylor’s punt percentage at Iowa is 45.1% when the ball lands inside the 20-yard line.
Taylor has the most punting yards in the nation and is sixth in the nation in terms of yards per punt. Although Iowa would rather not punt as frequently as it has this season, having a player like Taylor punt the ball away occasionally could actually benefit your team.
This year, he has also made multiple punts of at least sixty yards.
Presented by HawkeyeSports.com, these are a few of Taylor’s midseason achievements.
Throughout his time in Iowa City, Taylor has been a key member of the special teams unit and will be remembered as one of the greatest punters in program history, if not the greatest.
The Impact: With Taylor declaring his desire to join the NFL, the Hawkeyes will have to find a replacement punter. Though we’ve been informed that Iowa intends to take the Australian route, as it did with Taylor, to add a punter who could potentially make an immediate impact in Iowa City, the Hawkeyes are still expected to search the transfer portal for a punter. Iowa’s approach places a lot of emphasis on special teams, so the Hawkeyes will need to bring in a punter who can make an impact similar to what Taylor has done over the past two seasons.
Even though there are still many teams that could qualify for the College Football Playoffs, the field for the national championship is getting smaller with each passing week. That was the case on Tuesday night when the CFP committee unveiled its third top 25 rankings of the year, highlighting a declining field of genuine Playoff contenders. After the Bulldogs’ dominance of Ole Miss over the weekend, the committee moved Georgia past Ohio State for the top rank.
With Penn State’s defeat at Michigan last weekend, the competitive Big Ten East—which continues to control the top spot in the rankings—became more apparent. However, as the regular season draws to a close, each of the Power Five conferences has at least one viable Playoff contender.
