BOULDER — Taylor Embree was in a position that young football coaches dream of.
He was working under Kyle Shanahan, one of the brightest offensive minds in the sport. As a quality control assistant, he was working closely with George Kittle, the best tight end in the NFL. He had just coached in a Super Bowl as a 31-year-old.
Oh, and he was being mentored by Jon Embree, one of the best tight ends coaches in the NFL — who also happens to be Taylor’s father.
But then the University of Colorado called.
“I told myself I wasn’t going to leave (San Francisco) unless the perfect opportunity came along,” Taylor Embree said Wednesday. “To me, this is as perfect as it gets.”
Taylor’s father played tight end at CU and Taylor was born in Colorado during the second and final season of his father’s injury-shortened NFL career. Jon Embree then became a coach and spent most of Taylor’s childhood working at CU.
Jon Embree moved his family to Kansas City when he took a job coaching the Chiefs’ tight ends — including Hall-of-Famer Tony Gonzalez — while Taylor was in high school. But Taylor still identifies with Boulder.
“This is a unique opportunity because this is home for me,” Embree said. “There’s a lot of pride and a lot of tradition that I’m familiar with. There isn’t a place I’d rather start my coaching career than here.”
Prior to teaming up with his father to spend the last three seasons as an offensive quality control coach in San Francisco, Embree spent a year as a defensive assistant with the Chiefs in 2016. Before that, he was a graduate assistant at his alma mater, UCLA.
But before he went to UCLA, Colorado offensive coordinator Darrin Chiaverini remembers Embree running around the Buffs’ facilities as a ball boy.
“Taylor Embree is a really good, young coach,” Chiaverini said. “He has a really, really bright future. I’m excited that he’s on our staff. You guys are going to find out quickly that he’s a really good young coach.”
Now, for the first time in his career, Embree has his own room to manage. Colorado’s tight ends are depleted and Chiaverini said Wednesday that the Buffs are still recruiting the position.
Luckily, Embree has some high-level experience he can bank on when he’s talking to recruits.
“Sometimes they’re like ‘Man, George Kittle. You helped and worked with George Kittle,'” Embree said. “Some other kids, it doesn’t really stick to them, it doesn’t matter as much.”
Embree has found a theme among the two groups of prospects.
“Some kids are just picking places because they have the cool helmets or the old tradition,” Embree said. “What I’ve found is the kids that do their research and they look up the coach and who they’ve been with, those are the kids that I think (my experience) resonates more with. Those kids understand who they’re working with and what they’re trying to be.”
The kids who do their own research and study their potential coaches and the outcomes of players those coaches have worked with are already showing the signs of being good students once they arrive on campus, and that’s important to Embree.
“Tight end is a unique position,” he said. “You have to be good at the run game, pass game, and pass protection. In my mind, you need to know and read the defense better than the quarterback does. It’s one of those positions that you want guys who want to learn, you want guys who are eager to develop, and understand that it’s a process in developing.”
Luckily, Embree has an in with that type of tight end prospect:
“Those are the guys who think it’s cool that you worked with Kittle.”
