Memphis RB Patrick Taylor Jr. could have gone to the NFL. He came back to be 'the man.'

Patrick Taylor Jr. started wearing the 10 wristbands last year. 

He wears them to class and out to dinner. He wears them when he wakes up, when he goes to sleep and every minute in between. He even wears them over his tape during Memphis football games. 

“Little reminders,” Taylor calls them.

Some have spiritual messages befitting a running back who this year started a daily Bible study group for his teammates. There are rubber wristbands from St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital and the American Athletic Conference. There is also a single piece of thread, a wish bracelet his girlfriend brought back from a recent trip to Jamaica. 

And then there are the wristbands that pertain to football, with generic motivational sayings Taylor looks to at very specific moments. 

“Exceed your own expectations,” one reads, and it's perhaps the most telling one because it's a glimpse inside how important this 2019 Memphis football season will be for Taylor and how important Taylor will be for this 2019 Memphis football season. 

As Taylor prepares for his senior year, a senior year that will turn him into a star if all goes as planned, very few outside the program realize the choice he faced to be here.

There was a scenario in which he didn’t come back, and it required a decision that deserves to be celebrated by Tiger fans ahead of this highly anticipated campaign.

Because in those days after the Tigers’ Birmingham Bowl loss to Wake Forest, as Tony Pollard and fellow running back Darrell Henderson elected to forgo their final year of eligibility for the NFL draft, Taylor pondered doing the same.

Taylor had heard back from the NFL draft’s advisory board and his grade was the exact same as Pollard’s. After Taylor shared the load with Henderson and Pollard for three years and became just the fourth 1,000-yard rusher in program history last season, NFL scouts predicted he could be selected in the fifth through seventh rounds.

There was a distinct possibility three Memphis running backs would leave school early for the NFL.

Which, obviously, created a dilemma.

“With the draft grade, it could have went either way,” said Taylor’s father, Patrick Sr. His son would have to “kind of go out there and take a chance.”

It could have gone the way it did for Pollard, who ended up getting chosen by the Dallas Cowboys in the fourth round. Or it could have gone the way it has for so many others — undrafted and clawing just to make an NFL roster. 

So Taylor weighed the options with his family and coach Mike Norvell. 

They all knew there were parts of Taylor’s game that could benefit from another year in college, that his draft stock was more likely to rise than fall. He could be a better blocker and receiver on third down.  He could better show his ability to make people miss in small holes. He could become the home run threat Henderson became.

He could be more than the 6-foot-3, 223-pound battering ram with a nose for the end zone that he had been for three years.  

But he could also prove all that in an NFL training camp. He could not risk an injury at one of the sport’s most physically demanding positions while deferring an NFL dream that can oftentimes be a fleeting one.

“He made a decision solely based off of what was in his best interests,” Norvell said. 

And it was a decision, once Taylor arrived at it, that made sense for one very straightforward reason.

“I could be the man,” he said.

Which is what he is right now about a week away from Memphis' season opener against Ole Miss. If 2017 was the year of Anthony Miller and Riley Ferguson, and 2018 was the year of Henderson, it appears 2019 will belong to Taylor. 

Norvell says the plan is to get him the ball about 25 times per game this season.

Running backs coach Anthony Jones says there's no reason Taylor can't match Henderson's production of a year ago.

ESPN draft guru Mel Kiper Jr.'s preseason big board says Taylor is the fifth-best senior running back prospect in the country.

The Memphis football media guide, which features Taylor on the cover, says he could end this season second behind only DeAngelo Williams in the program record books in almost every major rushing statistic.     

"There’s an opportunity to really show who he is," Patrick Taylor Sr. said.

Maybe for the first time.

Taylor tells the story of how he ended up at Memphis often. How all those Texas schools somehow overlooked a 6-foot-3 running back who played in a pass-first offense at his high school in the Houston suburbs. How he was initially committed to Colorado, until an official visit to Memphis in January 2016.

It was then that he chose the Tigers — almost exactly three years before choosing them again — while standing in the middle of the Liberty Bowl, in the middle of winter, with ice on the field.

“I just saw myself playing there," he explained. "It's worked out, but ..."

Taylor's voice trailed off for a second and he looked down at those wristbands, to remind himself again why he's here.

"They told me I wasn’t good enough," he continued, "and in the back of my head that’s everything I think about every time I go out on the field."

You can reach Commercial Appeal columnist Mark Giannotto via email at mgiannotto@gannett.com and follow him on Twitter: @mgiannotto